A One Mann’s Movies review of “Fall” (2022).
Having been on holiday, I now have some catching up to do! “Fall” is the first of a double bill I saw yesterday. Occasionally there’s a low budget movie (in this case, just $3 million) that does something novel and original and hits a nerve with audiences. It it does it well, then it can also be a massive hit. And “Fall” does do it very well indeed!
I saw this as part of a #CineworldUnlimited special preview screening. It’s out in UK cinemas from Friday.
Bob the Movie Man Rating(s):
Plot Summary:
Youtuber Shiloh Hunter (Virginia Gardner) wants to break her best friend Becky Connor (Grace Fulton) out of her grief after a tragic climbing accident involving her husband. She persuades Becky to join her in an illegal climb of a massive TV mast in the Mojave desert. But the rusty mast is not necessarily going to be the pushover the climbers hoped for.
Certification:
Talent:
Starring: Grace Fulton, Virginia Gardner, Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
Directed by: Scott Mann (no relation!).
Written by: Jonathan Frank and Scott Mann.
Twitter Handles: #FallMovie.
“Fall” Review:
Positives:
- Given the volume of movies produced, it’s always interesting to get a refreshing new concept. And the fresh ground cut here (at least in a big release film) is the ‘fad’ of young youtubers – with more adrenaline than sense – free-climbing high structures in the search for TikTok “Likes”. “Fall” neatly develops this into a tense and enthralling survival movie. True, that putting attractive girls in a perilous situation has been done many times before – notably in “47 Metres Down” and Blake Lively’s excellent “The Shallows“. But I don’t think we’ve not been “UP” before like this.
- And UP we most definitely are! The film plays off nerve-wracking climbing films like “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol”, “Cliffhanger” and the wonderful documentary “Free Solo”. Here, I found the vertiginous shots, particularly in the scenes where they are first climbing up the tower, so nerve-wracking that at times I was feeling physically nauseous! Looking around the cinema, there were a good 50% of people watching with their hands up to their face. This is a really tense watch, ideal for communal cinema in a packed auditorium.
- Normally in these survival films, you end up entertainingly screaming at the screen “WHY DON’T YOU DO <<insert survival idea>> YOU STUPID WOMAN?”. And this film is no exception. It’s like that old business studies game called “Survival” where you are stranded (e.g. in a desert) with only a limited number of items that you have to rank in terms of their importance in keeping you alive. And, in fairness to the writers, they have neatly thought all of these options through. You feel nicely smug when they try out some of the ideas you’ve thought of. And similarly, you feel nicely smug that you’ve thought of some ideas they haven’t tried. (I’ll add a few of mine in a spoiler section below the trailer, but please comment with others!).
- With such a small cast this is a great “made in lockdown” movie, and I thought Fulton and Gardner did a pretty good job as the muscle-bound girls in peril. They are hampered with a few hammy lines, but overall I found them very convincing.
- There is a neat twist (also discussed in the spoiler section) that I didn’t see coming.
- The cinematography (by the Spaniard MacGregor) is breathtaking, with some fabulous aerial footage. Reading an interesting Q&A with director Scott Mann (no relation) here, they actually were doing practical filming at 2,000 feet up (albeit at the top of a prop tower built on a cliff). And the reality really shows on the big screen.
Negatives:
- Some of the dialogue is a bit cheesy. And a plot-point concerning some drifter characters strains credibility somewhat.
Trigger Issues
There’s a really obvious one here! If you are severely afraid of heights, this movie will not help that fear! For those not afraid of heights, this might do for you what “Jaws” did for sea-bathing!
Summary Thoughts on “Fall”:
This is a cracker of a movie that you MUST see on a big screen. DO NOT wait for it to come to streaming where it will lose a lot of its impact. And ideally (if in the UK), go see it this weekend, on Saturday night, in a packed cinema, since it is a really effective ‘communal watch’ film.
I often like to sneak one of two ‘smaller’ indie films into my Top 10 list each year. And although it’s not perfect, this one might be a strong contender. Recommended for thrills!
Trailer for “Fall”
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiAqDjFBekM .
Spoiler Section:
Don’t read past this point if you’ve not seen the movie.
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NO, SERIOUSLY!
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Rescue options
So, here are some thoughts on ways out of the situation the girls find themselves in:
- Once they had the drone, they could have fixed the remaining mobile phone to the drone and ordered the drone to land the phone at the foot of the tower where they knew there was mobile coverage. (Now, I know they were using the last remaining phone to control the drone, but I presume there would have been a way to pre-program it to descend and land).
- After catching and killing the vulture, Becky could have stuffed the remaining phone into the insides of the bird and dropped that down the tower. Even dead, the feathers would have generated air resistance and resulted in a relatively soft landing.
- On the first night, why didn’t they shim up the pole and disable the light? As it was a warning light for aircraft, someone in the motel/diner would have probably reported it to the authorities. (True, it might have been put onto a long backlog of fixes).
The Twist
I must admit I didn’t see the twist of Shiloh being dead coming. It’s a device we’ve seen before of course in – for example – the Shailene Woodley yachting story “Adrift“. And it was nicely done. Particularly when you’ve been mocking the unlikeliness of Becky being able to dead-lift Shiloh to the top of the tower again and the ‘dead Shiloh’ counterpoints that with a “you didn’t think you could do that, did you?” line!
