Apex (2026)

As if Dangerous Animals weren't abominable enough, Netflix essentially repeats the exercise here: a big Hollywood name - in this case, Charlize Theron - gets thrown in amongst the Aussies in a horror thriller that squanders its most interesting idea, namely that a strong independent woman is pitted against  toxic masculinity in a remote Aussie environment, and instead serves up unedifying nonsense about an impossibly bizarre killer - Taron Egerton's psycho would sit more comfortably in Pan's Labyrinth - and, suggesting how little anyone cares about this throwaway exercise, the film has been given a name that is destined to bury it amongst Google search results for a computer game and an old Bruce Willis bomb.

★★☆☆☆

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Mystery Road (2013)

A detective played by the terrific Aaron Pedersen investigates the murder of a teenage girl whose body is found beside a highway in outback Queensland, in this first (the second is "Goldstone") "Jay Swan" outing, a movie that could easily have been an Arthur Upfield "Bony" adaptation except that it is more dour, monotone, and a more rudimentary police procedural than that, and also its spectacularly photographed life-in-outback-Australia features mobile phones, pokies, Facebook, and other modern-day societal ills.

★★★☆☆

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