Review: Fall

How’s this for a (literal) high concept: two young women drive out into the middle of nowhere to climb a two thousand feet tall disused television transmitter tower… and then can’t get back down. Safe to say those with a fear of heights might want to sit this one out.

After seeing her husband fall off a cliff, Becky (Grace Caroline) has spent the last year down the bottom of a bottle – but now her influencer bestie Shiloh (Virginia Gardner) has a great idea for her latest post (no, it's not "show more cleavage", though that does come into it) and she needs a partner who knows her way around insanely tall objects. Becky is skeptical, but also has literally nothing else to do and what better way to get her life back on track than by risking it for online status?

 

They drive out to the desert, they go up, and they don’t come down. For thrill-seeking movie-goers that’s all you really need to know (though here’s a hint at what comes next: vultures). This is relatively restrained as far as having people dangling off various edges goes; director and co-writer Scott Mann knows that when you're this far off the ground doing pretty much anything is extremely risky, and the "less is (usually) more" approach cranks the tension high while keeping things grounded (pun intended).

Much of the high-rise action is filmed from a distance that re-enforces both their isolation and just how little room they have to move; everything else just makes it very clear that it's a very long way down. Do they just sit quietly and wait, or do they have to climb up, down, and all over the tiny platform they're stuck on just to have any hope of staying alive? Let's just say they probably should have brought a bit more rope with them.

 

It’s not all about dangling off a very slender and very rickety tower though, as this also features a fair amount of on-ground backstory that makes this more than just an excuse to give everyone in the cinema a bad case of vertigo - though this is pure nightmare fodder for anyone who's ever been even the slightest bit concerned about falling victim to gravity.

 

Characters are fleshed out in ways that provide (a little) conflict while still keeping them plausible as friends, and as experienced climbers their various approaches to getting down largely make sense - or, to put it another way, they don't ignore the obvious solutions just because the movie needs them stuck, making them the kind of smart characters you want to see survive rather than dimwits you're just waiting to see die.

 

- Anthony Morris