Apex ending explained: What happened to the missing people?

(Warning: The following article contains major spoilers for Apex.)

The latest film to star Oscar winner Charlize Theron and Golden Globe winner Taron Egerton is an exciting action thriller set in Australia. Theron plays Sasha, a rock climber and thrill-seeker whose adventures down under take a nasty turn after she runs into Ben, played by Egerton.

The movie begins with a scene that shows the death of Sasha's partner, Tommy (played by Eric Bana), who falls unconscious during a rock climbing trip. Sasha then faces an impossible choice: accept her fate and perish alongside Tommy, or cutting him loose so that she can at least survive.

Forced to abandon her partner for her own survival, this opening gives Sasha a tragic backstory which sets her up perfectly for the dramatic events to follow.

Five months later, Sasha is on her own in Australia, which is when she first meets Ben. He chats to her in a store, apparently concerned for her safety after Sasha has a run-in with a group of seemingly dangerous hunters. She refuses his help, keen to take on her journey alone.

After taking a kayak down some river rapids and camping overnight, Sasha is shocked when, the following day, she returns to her tent to find her belongings missing. It's at this point that she comes across Ben again. He seems to have been following her.

Initially thinking that Ben is trying to hit on her, Sasha's world is turned upside down when he reveals himself to be a hunter - not a hunter of wildlife, but a hunter of rock climbers, kayakers, and other adventurers like Sasha.

Far from the nice-but-a-little-creepy guy Sasha first thought Ben to be, he reveals to her face in the woods that he is going to hunt her down and kill her. This sets in motion the main narrative of the story - a cat-and-mouse game where Sasha must escape Ben, or find herself sealed to the same fate as many other missing climbers and adventurers.

It is revealed that Ben has killed - and possible eaten - many such victims, including his own mother. In a particularly chilling scene, Ben reveals that his motives stem from a (presumably misunderstood) set of native tribal rituals. This includes the fact that he has filed each of his teeth into sharp points, to make it easier to bite into his victims.

His belief is that by killing these people, he can absorb their spirits, and this is the logic with which he explains how his mother is always with him.

Sasha posits that Ben's behaviour stems from an abusive childhood - that he was hurt as a child, and this is why he took out this pain on his mother and his other victims. However, this is never explicitly revealed in the film.

Sasha is the first of Ben's 'prey' who has been able to fight back well enough to threaten his life, which culminates in Sasha managing to break Ben's leg. With his bone exposed, his only chance at survival is to allow Sasha to assist him up a mountain.

What happened to the missing people?

After discovering a cave filled with the bodies of the people Ben had killed, Sasha puts two and two together and realises that these are the corpses of the many missing thrill-seekers. As she and Sasha climb the mountain together, he is vigilantly watching to make sure she doesn't stab him in the back. However, Sasha is one step ahead, and managed to tie Ben's rope to a dead branch - and, just as he least expects it, she sends him plummeting to his death.

Able to get herself around and on top of the mountain's final overhang - using the exact manoeuvre that led to Tommy's untimely death at the start of the film - Sasha finds help and is rescued. She then gets in touch with the authorities, and a police report is filed.

With news of the victims making Australian television, Sasha hopes that the families of Ben's victims can at least feel some relief in knowing what happened to their deceased relatives.

The final scene of the film shows Sasha, still mourning Tommy's death, staring into the sunset on a picture-perfect beach. It's a bittersweet final moment; while Sasha managed to survive, there are so many victims who didn't.

Apex is streaming now on Netflix.

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