If you’re eating jerky while reading this, put it aside. After watching Netflix’s Apex, starring Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton, you might not look at the dried strips of meat the same ever again.
What makes Apex effective as a survival thriller is that, on the surface, it seems like a story you’ve seen a thousand times before. The setup is familiar. We’ve seen this type of broken protagonist, this remote setting and even that strange guy lurking in the bushes before. But what the film does cleverly is completely flip the script on your expectations. And nowhere is that more prominent than with Ben’s jerky… Ben’s human jerky, which is made from all the victims he has killed in the past.
Stop for a moment and take that in. At the beginning of the film, we see Ben, a fairly charming guy, sell Jenno beef jerky (named after his mother, who was also his first kill) to a local store. He even later shares some with Theron’s Sasha. That secret ingredient? Yeah, it isn’t spice. It’s human meat.
When the big reveal happens, everything suddenly clicks into place, and Theron’s character is, of course, completely disgusted. Even if she survives Ben’s warped ritual, she has to live with the fact that she’s eaten human beings for the rest of her life.
Egerton revealed that he approached the role of the villain differently in Apex. Instead of seeing him as a monster, he treated Ben like the hero of his own story. That mindset makes the performance creepier because nothing actually feels forced. In Ben’s mind, turning humans into jerky makes perfect sense.
“There are native tribes that say to capture the spirit of your prey, you have to consume its liver,” he explains, trying to justify turning people into lite snacks. Heck, he even files his teeth down, claiming pain is part of growing up.
By the time Sasha finally claws her way toward survival, dragging both her trauma and her attacker through those rivers and ravines, you’re no longer thinking about the opening climb or even about her daring escape. You’re thinking about that jerky packet.
“Original flavour. Made in Australia. All natural ingredients.”
Technically, he wasn’t lying.
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