Movies Like Apex: 15 Survival Thrillers to Watch Next

September 11, 2026 • Victoria Taylor

September 11, 2026 9 min read Updated September 14, 2026

Baltasar Kormákur’s Apex takes one of the simplest and most durable thriller structures in cinema — one person being hunted by another — and drops it into the spectacular but unforgiving Australian wilderness. Charlize Theron plays Sasha, a grieving adventurer who heads alone into the wild while attempting to push herself physically and psychologically after a traumatic loss. What begins as a solitary journey becomes something far more dangerous when she encounters a ruthless killer who sees another human being as prey.

The setup is deliberately stripped back. Sasha is isolated, help is distant and the landscape itself becomes part of the challenge. The tension comes from movement, terrain and adaptation: can she stay ahead of him, understand how he thinks, and use the same environment that makes her vulnerable to create an advantage of her own? If you are searching for movies like Apex, the strongest recommendations place ordinary or emotionally damaged people in environments where the normal protections of society have disappeared, then gradually change the relationship between hunter and hunted.

1. Blood Star

Britni Camacho as Bobbi Torres · John Schwab as Sheriff Bilstein

Bobbi Torres bloodied and terrified at night in Blood Star

Blood Star is one of the closest structural companions to Apex. Both films centre on a woman travelling alone through a remote landscape who comes into contact with a predatory man and gradually realises that the encounter is not accidental. What initially looks like an ordinary journey becomes a survival situation in which geographical isolation gives the person pursuing her an enormous advantage.

In Blood Star, the landscape is The Desert rather than the Australian wilderness. A young woman travelling alone attracts the attention of a small-town sheriff, and what begins as a seemingly routine interaction with law enforcement becomes increasingly disturbing as his behaviour reveals a much darker intention. The crucial difference is that the threat does not initially look like a threat at all — the man following her wears a badge, carries legal authority and occupies exactly the social role she would ordinarily be expected to trust. That gives Blood Star a different psychological road thriller mechanism from Apex while preserving an unusually similar survival structure: Apex’s Sasha understands she is being hunted and must physically stay ahead of her pursuer, while Blood Star spends more time inside the terrifying transition between uncertainty and certainty.

Both films also build toward the central pleasure of the survival thriller: the gradual destabilisation of the predatory sheriff’s confidence. A man begins the story believing he has chosen somebody vulnerable, isolated and disadvantaged — what he fails to understand is that being frightened does not mean being incapable of resistance. For viewers who enjoyed the woman-versus-predator structure, remote landscape and reversal of hunter and hunted in Apex, Blood Star is one of the most natural films to watch next.

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2. Alone (2020)

Jules Willcox as Jessica

John Hyams’ Alone strips the survival thriller almost completely down to one woman, one man and the growing certainty that an apparently random encounter on the road is not random at all. Jessica cannot immediately behave as though she is being hunted because she has no proof — each new encounter changes the meaning of the previous one until suspicion finally becomes certainty.

Once that happens, Alone moves away from road thriller and into wilderness survival, making it an exceptionally close companion to both Apex and Blood Star. All three films begin with a woman travelling alone and progressively remove the systems that would normally protect her.

3. Revenge (2017)

Matilda Lutz as Jen

Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge combines female survival, desert isolation and violent reversal with an extraordinarily stylised visual approach, as a woman surrounded by men whose attitude toward her becomes increasingly threatening survives an attack and begins turning the desert against them.

The connection to Apex is immediate. Both films are built around a woman who initially appears vulnerable inside an environment controlled by men who believe they possess the advantage, and the survival narrative becomes increasingly satisfying as those assumptions collapse.

4. The Hunt (2020)

Betty Gilpin as Crystal

Craig Zobel’s The Hunt takes the predator-prey idea literally, as a group of strangers wake in an unfamiliar location and gradually discover that wealthy people have apparently selected them to be hunted for sport — only to badly misjudge one of their intended victims.

Like Apex, the movie eventually becomes less about escaping the hunter than about changing who occupies that role.

5. The Invisible Man (2020)

Elisabeth Moss as Cecilia Kass

Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man replaces open wilderness with psychological isolation but preserves the core predator-and-prey relationship, as a woman escaping an abusive relationship becomes convinced her supposedly dead ex has found a way to continue watching and attacking her — even though nobody else can see the threat.

Both protagonists have to understand the method being used against them before they can begin changing the balance of power. Running alone is not enough.

6. Hush (2016)

Kate Siegel as Maddie

Mike Flanagan’s Hush is another excellent example of a survival thriller reduced to its essential mechanics, as a deaf writer living alone in a remote house becomes the target of a masked killer who can hear what she cannot.

That practical intelligence connects closely to Apex. Survival is not simply a test of physical strength — the person being hunted has to understand the environment more quickly than the person doing the hunting.

7. Rust Creek (2018)

Hermione Corfield as Sawyer

Jen McGowan’s Rust Creek follows a young woman travelling alone through Kentucky who takes a wrong turn while driving to a job interview and encounters two dangerous local men, forcing her deeper into unfamiliar terrain.

Sawyer is not presented as a conventional action hero — her strength comes from intelligence and persistence, giving Rust Creek a strong connection to the realistic end of the female-survival thriller tradition.

8. The Nightingale (2018)

Aisling Franciosi

Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale is far darker and more historically grounded than Apex, but it shares the idea of a woman entering hostile wilderness while pursuing — and being pursued by — men responsible for profound violence, set in colonial Tasmania.

Its connection to Apex comes primarily through physical endurance, hostile landscape and the transformation of grief into a journey where survival and confrontation become inseparable.

9. Run Sweetheart Run (2020)

Ella Balinska as Cherie

Run Sweetheart Run begins in the world of dating rather than wilderness survival, as a single mother’s seemingly promising date becomes terrifying when the man she meets reveals himself as a violent predator, transforming into a night-long pursuit through Los Angeles.

Where Apex uses enormous natural spaces, this film uses the city — yet both create the same fundamental condition: a woman deliberately selected as prey by a man who believes the pursuit is governed by rules that favour him.

10. Prey (2022)

Amber Midthunder as Naru

Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey transports the survival-hunt structure into the world of the Predator franchise, as a young Comanche woman investigates signs that an unfamiliar predator possessing technology far beyond her understanding has entered the landscape.

What makes Prey particularly relevant to Apex is its focus on observation — every encounter provides information that eventually lets the hunted understand the hunter’s assumptions well enough to exploit them.

11. Backcountry (2014)

Missy Peregrym and Jeff Roop

Adam MacDonald’s Backcountry takes a couple into the Canadian wilderness and gradually removes every layer of security that normally separates people from the natural environment, after their camping trip becomes dangerous when they become lost deep in the woods.

Unlike Apex, the central predator is not human — a useful reminder of how little the basic survival structure actually depends upon motive.

12. Hunter Hunter (2020)

Devon Sawa and Camille Sullivan

Shawn Linden’s Hunter Hunter follows a family living remotely in the wilderness who become convinced that a dangerous wolf has returned to the area — only to discover the real danger may not be what they initially believed.

The film deliberately plays with the relationship between humans and predators, asking what happens when humans apply predator-prey logic to one another.

13. The Grey (2011)

Liam Neeson as John Ottway

Joe Carnahan’s The Grey stars Liam Neeson as a marksman working at a remote Alaskan oil facility who survives a plane crash alongside several other men, stranded in freezing wilderness while being pursued by wolves.

Like Apex, physical landscape is one of the principal antagonists — cold, distance and exhaustion are every bit as dangerous as the predator pursuing the characters.

14. The Silencing (2020)

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Rayburn

Robin Pront’s The Silencing combines wilderness thriller with serial-killer mystery, as a former hunter living near a wildlife sanctuary becomes involved in the pursuit of a killer operating in the surrounding woods, turning the forest into both crime scene and hunting ground.

Like Apex, the movie repeatedly draws parallels between hunting animals and hunting people — tracking, concealment and knowledge of terrain become essential survival skills.

15. A Perfect Getaway (2009)

Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich

David Twohy’s A Perfect Getaway follows two couples travelling through the Hawaiian wilderness after reports emerge that a recently married couple have been murdered nearby, with uncertainty growing over whether the killers are among the group.

Unlike Apex, the primary tension initially comes from identifying the predator rather than escaping one — but once the truth becomes clearer, the film moves decisively into survival territory.

Why Apex Works as a Predator-and-Prey Thriller

The central strength of Apex is the clarity of its dramatic engine. The moment the killer chooses Sasha as prey, almost everything irrelevant to survival falls away — the protagonist does not need to solve a complicated conspiracy before the story can work. A good survival thriller continually redistributes advantage: the predator may have weapons, knowledge of the terrain or superior physical strength, while the person being hunted has to compensate through intelligence, endurance and improvisation. That shifting balance is what turns pursuit into drama.

Movies Like Apex About Women Being Hunted

Blood Star, Alone, Revenge, Hush, The Invisible Man and Run Sweetheart Run all explore different versions of a woman alone in an environment where another person has deliberately chosen her as a target. The woman survives by understanding the imbalance rather than pretending it does not exist.

Wilderness Survival Movies Like Apex

For viewers most interested in the Australian landscape and physical survival elements of Apex, Backcountry, The Grey, Prey, The Nightingale and Hunter Hunter provide the strongest alternatives — environments where ordinary infrastructure disappears and a skilled antagonist becomes especially frightening because the landscape multiplies whatever advantage they already possess.

Remote Landscapes as Psychological Traps

One of the most interesting connections between Apex, Blood Star and Revenge is the way enormous landscapes can create claustrophobia. There are no walls, and there may be open terrain extending all the way to the horizon — yet the protagonist’s meaningful choices become increasingly narrow. That contradiction is one of the reasons this desert road thriller territory works so effectively in survival cinema.