Fall Review: A Proudly Dumb and Panic Attack-Inducing Roller-Coaster Ride

Scott Mann’s film succeeds by simply committing to and steadily ratcheting up the ludicrous awesomeness of its premise.

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Fall
Photo: Lionsgate

Scott Mann’s Fall pivots on a simple, nerve-shredding premise: Two extreme adventure climbers, Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) and Hunter (Virginia Gardner), find themselves stuck at the top of a 2,000-foot radio tower with no way down. The abandoned tower is located in a remote patch of the California desert, and the top section of the ladder that the young women use to climb up breaks off as soon as they reach the small platform at the tower’s peak. And on top of being completely unshielded from the elements, Becky and Hunter also, of course, have no cellphone reception and didn’t tell anyone where they were going.

Throughout, Mann amusingly gooses us into jubilation over the recklessness of his characters’ spur-of-the-moment endeavor. As Becky and Hunter make their rambunctious initial ascent, blithely ribbing each other and indifferent to the decaying nature of the tower around them, the camera lingers on each slowly loosening bolt and cracking ladder rung along the way. It all but invites the audience to shout at the screen, begging the characters to go back down.

But Mann and co-screenwriter Jonathan Frank also slyly twist Becky and Hunter’s heedless behavior (in a reflection of Gen Z’s propensity toward social media posturing, Hunter is vlogging the whole experience) into the stuff of self-reflexive comedy. “I almost died there!” Becky cries out when the ladder crumbles and almost takes her down with it, and when both girls then burst into hysterical laughter, it becomes impossible not to join in.

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It’s not all fun and games, though, as there’s another, more serious, reason for this quest. Becky’s boyfriend and the third member of their adventure team, Dan (Mason Gooding), died a few months earlier during one of their free-solo mountain climbs. Becky and Hunter aim to spread his ashes at the top of the tower, but, more importantly, the excursion is meant to bring Becky out of her grief-laden funk, or, as Hunter puts it, “kick fear in the dick!” This element is meant to give Fall emotional heft but only ends up slowing down the film’s otherwise robust momentum with cliché melodrama, and in spite of Currey and Gardener’s best efforts.

Thankfully, Fall is first and foremost about the spectacle and it certainly delivers on its promise of high-wire thrills. Via sweaty-palm-inducing compositions and a mix of wild practical and CGI effects, the film vicariously places us on top of the wind-battered tower alongside its protagonists. Once stranded, Becky and Hunter stay calm and rely on their wits as they contend with one obstacle after another, including one particularly bonkers encounter with a pair of circling vultures. By simply committing to and steadily ratcheting up the ludicrous awesomeness of its premise, Fall ultimately coalesces into the kind of proudly dumb roller-coaster ride that’s sorely lacking in the current multiplex landscape.

Score: 
 Cast: Grace Caroline Currey, Virginia Gardner, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Mason Gooding, Jasper Cole  Director: Scott Mann  Screenwriter: Jonathan Frank, Scott Mann  Distributor: Lionsgate  Running Time: 107 min  Rating: PG-13  Year: 2022  Buy: Video

Mark Hanson

Mark Hanson is a film writer and curator from Toronto, Canada, and the product manager at Bay Street Video, one of North America's last remaining video stores.

3 Comments

  1. The irony is, they are climbing something that is meant to be climbed. So is this a movie about Gen Z hubris or America’s crumbling infrastructure…

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