I really admire Charlize Theron, who began her movie career as gorgeous eye candy, gradually developed into a charming leading lady, startlingly submerged herself into what I consider to be the greatest film performance I have ever witnessed in Monster and has since forged a legacy as a dominating physical presence in a cadre of action films, the best of which is monumental, Mad Max Fury Road.  She continues to challenge herself as an actress and a physical performer and yet remains a babe thirty years after her movie career began.  But in this movie I thought her character was crazy.

Baltasar Kormákur’s film begins in Norway, with Sasha (Charlize Theron) and Tommy (Eric Bana) climbing a frightening vertical rock cliff in an adventure that eventually turns deadly.  Months later Sasha begins to explore (fictional) Wandarra National Park in Australia, where she plans to kayak a dangerous river.  She has uncomfortable encounters with local hunters before finding herself hunted by someone else.  In short order Sasha’s outdoor adventure becomes a desperate race for survival.  Can her experience save her, or is she doomed to become the latest victim of a truly disturbed serial killer?

The film benefits from its settings, both of which are beautiful and harrowing at the same time.  The Norway scenes had me cringing, for I cannot understand how sane people can risk life and limb scaling such heights, especially anchoring a tent to the rock face and trusting to sleep there.  The Australian scenes are much more sedate and scenic, until the human element interferes and provides proof that man is the most dangerous animal in the jungle.  I have no problem with this scenario, but it seems to me that this story rushes into its “Most Dangerous Game” mode without fully establishing its parameters or its antagonists.

The other elements which eventually lessened the film’s punch involved its revelations of the serial killer’s truly disturbed mind.  When this story turns ugly it turns very ugly, and it’s not so much horrific as it is sickening.  I believe it has become a weakness of modern films to try and shock audiences with depravity, and while it is understandable in this scenario I don’t know that the film needed to be as ugly as it becomes in that hidden canyon.  And then, for its final act, the story becomes painfully obvious and inevitable.  Credit the actors (especially Charlize) for their awesome physicality but the story seems concurrently underdeveloped and harshly brutal, wavering between really convincing believability and shallow “movie reality” moments that just don’t cut the mustard.  ☆ ☆ 1/2.  28 June 2026.