Here’s one that I admit caught my attention from the poster—something that seemed in the vein of The Shallows or 47 Meters Down, all offering a simple thriller premise: what do you do when put in a situation where escape is so close, and yet so unattainable? Where those other films dealt with oceanic situations, this one takes the opposite direction of placing this predicament 2000 feet right into the sky—and with all the potential spectacle that comes with that.
Coming from Scott Mann, Fall is something I managed to catch a full-screen Imax screening of—and, well, on the visuals, it sure does pay off. But first of all comes the story—the focus is Becky, (Grace Currey), who loses her husband Dan (Mason Gooding) in a rock climbing tragedy. Almost a year later, her streamer friend Hunter (Virginia Gardner) decides to restore Becky’s spirit with a trip up a ridiculously tall television tower out in the desert. Things, as you can probably guess, do not go as smoothly as planned, and soon our heroines are left trapped up there with vultures circling, dehydration kicking in, and minds fraying.
Some perhaps raise an eyebrow at Hunter’s motive in this—but then again, given the sorts of things online video makers have done in the name of making little lines of numbers rise up, be it cavorting in the ruins of Pripyat to very questionable ‘pranks’ involving kitchen knives…I can buy it honestly.
There’s no mercy in the film when it comes to inciting vertigo—a combination of camera trickery and the sort of in-person digital backdrops used in Mandalorian mean that yes, a lot of it really was filmed at an altitude, even if not quite in the same situation. You have the sadistic pans to establish just how far they’re up, and the twisting vertical shots to give us uncompromising senses of sheer stomach-churning distance. From a technical side I have to give full props, especially from a relatively novice director—I do like such touches as our lead’s skin becoming more and blotchy the longer they’re exposed to unfiltered sunlight.
For the first two-thirds we have a decent enough job of the film taking advantage of the simple premise for some death-defying physical action, as the girls try their best to find some way, any way, down from their new roost. Things become a little more hit-and-miss later on though—a couple of contrivances combine with one rather big twist that’ll either hit you or leave you scratching your head. The ending is also perhaps slightly abrupt, although there’s one last cathartic moment for Becky that does at least get the audience fired up.
Overall, Fall’s a decent enough flick to round out the summer, even if it does stretch out the premise just a teeny bit. Still, I do always respect those that take the simplest of setups and push themselves to make the most out of them—which Mann certainly seems to have put the effort into doing here. If it sounds like a thrill to you, give it a look.
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