Director: Scott Mann
Screenplay: Scott Mann, Jonathan Frank
Starring: Grace Caroline Currey, Virginia Gardener, Mason Gooding, Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Country: United States
Running Time: 107 minutes
Year: 2022
BBFC Certificate: 15
For best friends Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) and Hunter (Virginia Gardner), life is all about conquering fears and pushing limits. But after they climb 2,000 feet to the top of a remote, abandoned radio tower, they find themselves stranded with no way down. Now Becky and Hunter’s expert climbing skills will be put to the ultimate test as they desperately fight to survive the elements, a lack of supplies and vertigo-inducing heights in this adrenaline-fuelled thriller co-starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
Fall is a cracking little thriller that could have done with being even littler. Scott Mann developed it as a short film, but it fell through and eventually got turned into a feature, but the intended short film would have tightened up the tension even further. To extend the drama, it can get a bit soap opera in a naive narrative; Jeffrey Dean Morgan makes his presence known but can’t escape that his cameo is a walking cliche. Still, not an inch of fat is wasted and every innocuous moment will pop-up again later on.
In 2010, Adam Green’s Frozen did a similar trick with a ski-lift. It also suffered the same issues as Fall and slipped into obscurity (especially losing valuable SEO to Disney). Hopefully, Fall won’t share a similar fate and find a deserving audience.
It starts off a bit like Cliffhanger, where the girls face an unspeakable tragedy, and settles into a The Descent plot (minus the creatures) which isn’t a bad place to start. But we’re itching to get to the tower that promised so much in a superb trailer.
It does not disappoint. The tower is immense and we’re immediately struck with, “why would you climb that thing?”. The rule of horror cinema is that there is no point screaming advice at the teenager about to wander down some dark steps; she is not aware of the narrative. So when Becky and Hunter start climbing that rusty hunk of junk, it’s only us that suffer, that watch through clenched fingers, as the bolts rattle and the wind whips. You might question why experienced climbers don’t do a few more basic checks, but where’s the fun in that? Because that’s the point. Fall is the best kind of audience-baiting fun.
Sure, I’d like Mann to have leaned into the ridiculousness of it more. You could just imagine what someone like Tarantino or the Safdie Brothers would have done to our nerves with similar material. But the bottom-line star of the show is that massive tower and if you have a hint of acrophobia, best of luck to you. You’re in for a ride.
VIDEO
Fall is a simple film for the most part, predominantly bright with lots of landscape, so it’s a fine looking transfer on Blu-ray. Most of the time is spent at the top of the tower of course, but the film’s success is down to knowing the girls are right there, hanging on by their fingertips.
AUDIO
Again, the film is not ambitious and it is itching to start climbing the tower. When we finally join the girls on the ascent, the soundtrack is really effective at making us feel every step, especially when the wind starts whipping around and you might forget for a moment that you’re not in your living room with a 5.1 setup.
EXTRAS
The Blu-ray is clearly labelled as Theatrical and Uncut, but whilst the running time is more, it’s hard to find the extra material. There doesn’t appear to be some grand missing scene, so it’s hard to recommend purely on that basis.
The Making of feature is at once predictable marketing fluff, but also it is great fun seeing some behind the scenes footage of how they prepared for the tower. The star of the extras though is absolutely the commentary; it helps that the film is unabashedly American, but Scott and James are irreverently British. Makes for an entertaining listen and makes you wonder how much of that cliched first half of the film was more tongue in cheek than it may appear.