Directed By Scott Mann

Starring – Grace Caroline Currey, Virgina Gardner, Jeffrey Dean Morgan

The Plot – For best friends Becky (Currey) and Hunter (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.

Rated PG-13 for bloody images, intense peril, and strong adult language

(1) Fall – Exclusive Official Teaser Trailer (2022) Grace Fulton, Virginia Gardner – YouTube

POSITIVES

At the very least, “Fall” delivers on its isolated gimmick with an abundance of thrills and chills, thanks entirely to Mann’s immersive direction continuously raising the stakes, one step at a time. Scott, who is known typically for B-grade action flicks, elevates his game here with a rich and thorough combination of production in sight and sound that not only constantly bare influence in the depths of the girls’ disparaging situation, but also help in amplifying the tension that work wonderfully with Tim Despic’s thunderous score plaguing it with unrelenting urgency. For the intricacies in sound design, the whirling of wind and blanketing of audible sound in the dialogue helps to articulate the isolation factor of their respective plights, which is already impactful as a result of the setting that is directly in the middle of the desert. Likewise, the breathtaking cinematography from Macgregor, a visual storyteller known for pushing boundaries, takes an eclipsing approach that constantly hangs above or at eye level to his characters, forcing us to endure the weight and reminder of the situation’s delicacies with the same emotional heft that is inescapable for them at every turn. It equally helps that the story doesn’t deviate from them, remaining faithfully by the girls’ side at all times, while offering us no escape from its clutches. This transcribes grave vulnerability in their situation, but also maintains the focus of the storytelling at all times on the essential conflict, which is rightfully where it needs to be. Aside from these piercing technical elements, the performances here I found to be slightly over satisfactory, with Currey’s evolution in arc giving way to a diminishing tenderness and emotional frailty that initially defines her character, but the kind of climbing internally that she overcomes with the movie’s many conflicting adversities that it continuously hurls her way. Her depth in emotion is only further tested by the range and slight deviation of brilliant make-up schemes that bare the weight of time spent directly under the sun’s brutal consequence. In watching films like these, it’s these subtle instances that I pay the most attention to, and with the duo’s skin constantly reddening and aging ghastlier, it makes the weight of their plight feel all the more believable in execution, but never to the point it ever felt distracting to the elements of the story that relied upon engagement. And for the story, it is definitely plagued with predictability, but one twist near the movie’s ending totally had me fooled, which is all the more frustrating when you consider the signs are littered casually throughout, and yet I never spotted it. It’s a brilliant reshaping of the stakes and situation that instills just enough motivation for Becky to keep pushing forward, all the while feeling like the perfect emphasis to her character’s aforementioned evolution that does effectively influence your interest in her conflict.

NEGATIVES

As for hinderances on the film, there are a few instances where the execution gets away from the grip of Mann, and it loses momentum from an otherwise impactful introduction. This is especially the case on the film’s pacing, which at a 102-minute run time is a bit too ambition for the lack of complexity to the storytelling focused on in the script, and could certainly use a fifteen-minute trimming, particularly during the second act, to keep the story moving. Honestly, there was never a period when I could say that I was bored with the film, but there are moments when the intention of a scene feels long-winded, and in ways that could easily be condensed to maintain the mystery of what they’re trying to convey. This leads me to the film’s biggest problem, which is its complete lack of subtlety in foreshadowing that gives far too much away in frustrating predictability. You will notice these instances immediately because they feature something strange that comes out of nowhere, and after a while you can coherently interpret that each of these steps will eventually find their way back to the meaningful channeling of the screenplay, whose reaching for the well renders it shallow in the subtleties and nuances of the story’s characters. This is equally the case with the perils of the first act backstory, which not only inflict every cliche of a character experiencing tragedy, from binge drinking to alienating family and friends, but also resort to fake-out dream sequences and overflowing convenience during the film’s far superior second half. Finally, while the technical and production elements are mostly effective in contributing to the confines of the conflict in one way or another, the distraction of some of the worst green-screen effects of the year continuously took me out of focus during sequences shot from above the vantage points of the characters. Sometimes it leads to lighting and shading feeling horrendously artificial, with the obviousness of characters being the only natural aspect in frame, while other times presenting computer-generated wilderness who move and stalk like human beings in costumes. If they refined some of the textures of the backdrops, the benefits would transfer seamlessly to the overwhelming stakes, but as it stands these artificiality simulations can’t escape the studios that they originate from, creating a jarring disposition that can’t convey reality, regardless of how good the performances could be.

OVERALL
“Fall” doesn’t completely the ground, but it is burdened by a few predictable outcomes and stock characterizations that limit its potential to making a thunderous thud within a heavily exploited genre of film. Even with nagging compromises, this film keeps climbing with a variety of thrills and chills from Scott Mann’s riveting scope in scale continuously tugging at our stomachs, forcing us and the prominence of the film to always look up.

My Grade: 6/10 or C+