Abhiroop Das
Helmed by Baltasar Kormákur, Netflix’s ‘Apex’ follows a grief-stricken adventurer named Sasha, who ditches the mountains of Norway for the Australian wilderness, hoping to wipe her slate clean. As she prepares a kayaking route across the Wandarra National Park, however, her path crosses with Ben, a local trucker who seems to know the forest like the back of his hand. What starts out as an exhilarating journey through several menacing river passes and towering cliffs turns sideways when Ben reveals that he likes to hunt humans. Before long, Sasha becomes the figurative prey in this equation and is given a single chance to outsmart the predator and survive. During the hunt, Wandarra slowly turns into a natural hellscape, isolating Sasha from all hope while simultaneously giving her the tools to win.
Wandarra is a Fictional National Park That Uses Australia’s Blue Mountains as a Base
Wandarra National Park is a fictional location created by writer Jeremy Robbins specifically for ‘Apex.’ As the main setting of the film, the terrain essentially becomes a character in itself, constantly shifting and revealing more of itself to Sasha as well as the audience. While the crew had the option to use VFX or CGI to craft a national park from scratch, Director Baltasar Kormákur instead opted to film on-site in Australia, capturing its real landscapes. Kormákur’s creative philosophy has always been to study and film in real locations, as it provides an organic base layer for the character and other elements to shine. While he and his team took over the African savannahs while filming ‘The Beast,’ with ‘Apex,’ filming primarily went on in the state of New South Wales.
Most of the towering mountains, cliffs, and canyons we see in ‘Apex’ are actually real and were lensed in and around Australia’s Blue Mountains, also known as Colomatta or Gulumada. The mountain range is more than a million years old and lies at the edge of Sydney’s main metropolitan region, making it an ecological and tourist hotspot. In the movie, Sasha refers to a particularly famous climbing spot as the Grand Isles Canyon, which by itself is a fictional location nestled inside Wandarra. In real life, the Blue Mountains are famous for their Grand Canyon track, which spans roughly four miles and is well known for its sandstone expanses and waterfalls. Given such similarities, it is possible that some iconic locations in the region served as reference points for the writers to create original locations for the film.
The Main River of Wandarra Might be Modeled After an Iconic Creek
The reason Sasha takes a break from mountaineering and ventures into Wandarra is to try out its challenging kayaking routes, which are only made possible due to a powerful river cutting through the forests. Notably, the Blue Mountains range is not famous for any particular river running through its center, as the major rivers of the region, primarily the Hawkesbury and Nepean rivers, mainly form the region’s boundaries. Instead, it is more probable that the movie’s central river is modeled after the Ginninderra Creek, which spans both the Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales.
The iconic Ginninderra Falls appears in the climax of ‘Apex,’ which makes it possible that the stream features in many of the movie’s kayaking sequences. Reportedly, since 2011, there has been strong advocacy for the establishment of a national park surrounding Ginninderra Falls, encompassing the neighboring Woodstock Nature Reserve and an additional 700 hectares of natural terrain. While it is possible that the movie draws inspiration from this proposition, much of what we see on screen comes from the minds of the creative team.
In a conversation with Outside Magazine, Charlize Theron, who essays Sasha, revealed that many of the film’s shooting locations often required hiking for an hour. Because of this, the crew almost never had to worry about clearing the sets, as the locations themselves were isolated enough to have very few people around. Theron described filming in these places as a spiritual experience, adding, “there was a level of respect for that nature, having ceremonies to acknowledge the land that you’re on. Those things really matter.” Because of such a rich experience, Theron called ‘Apex’ “my favorite movie that I ever shot,” and with how Wandarra National Park is brought to life, it hardly comes off as a surprise.
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