Movie Review – Fall (Mini Review)
Principal Cast : Grace Caroline Currey, Virginia Gardner, Mason Gooding, Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
Synopsis: When a high-rise climb goes wrong, best friends Becky and Hunter find themselves stuck at the top of a 2,000-foot TV tower.
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I’m not afraid of heights, so much as I’m afraid of the sudden stop at the end of a fall. Scott Mann’s Fall, a survivalist thriller at the opposite end of the access paradigm to Ryan Reynolds’ Buried, sees two young women scale the top of an enormous communications tower only to become trapped, and unable to descend. Playing strongly to the viewer’s fear of heights, and a ripping sense of vertigo in almost every frame, Fall is not for the faint of heart and should be earnestly sought out by anyone who enjoys their fingernails being shredded on the armrests of their seat. Tense, atmospheric and very well acted by the small cast – with a cameo by Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the father of one of the women – Fall is absorbing subgenre filmmaking that will quite literally take your breath away.
Acrophobics take note: Fall is not the film for you. Well written, offering great characters put into a horrendously nightmarish scenario thanks to both their own stupid choices and sheer bad luck, Fall is a story of survival that made me gasp several times, rivetted to the screen as Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) and Shiloh (Virginia Gardner) climb to the top of America’s tallest man-made structure, a massive radio tower in the desert, only to become trapped when part of the infrastructure collapses. Perilously close to falling, and unable to contact anyone far below, Becky and Shiloh battle oppressive heat, hunger, fatigue and even buzzards as the hours wear on, all while Becky’s father, James (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) tries to locate her. Mann’s script is pretty boilerplate in terms of character development, but the actresses work wonders with the material and really make both Becky and Shiloh empathetic and likeable, despite all their shortcomings.
Fall was shot on a practically built antennae set atop a mountain for realism, and the realism this provides the footage shown in the film is palpable. The girls really do look like they’re stuck thousands of feet in the air mainly because they really were sitting atop a prop a hundred feet off the ground, and both actresses give performances that feel far more grounded than the film really asks for. The gradual build-up of tension feels very much of the genre, almost like Hitchcock in a way, introducing our characters and their human failings before pitting them against the harshest and most unforgiving of the scientific principles: gravity and our fear of its effects from height. The film may not change the way you view the world or alter your perception of what it means to be human, but as a compact little thriller offering theme-park-ride chills and muffled screams, Fall is an absolute belter that belongs up there alongside the best the genre has to offer. Check it out if you can, even if you don’t want to. A satisfying little gem.
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