107 min | PG-13 | August 12, 2022 | Lionsgate
Two women climb a 2,000-foot abandoned radio tower for thrills. The ladder breaks. Now the only way down is the part nobody planned for.
Becky Connor and Shiloh Hunter are adrenaline junkies who chase grief with altitude. Becky lost her husband in a climbing accident a year ago and has stopped living. Shiloh, a stunt vlogger, drags her up a derelict 2,000-foot television tower in the desert to get her past it. The structure is rusted and forgotten and one rung from collapse. Fall is a survival thriller built on a single sadistic premise. The film is really about how far you will go to feel something when the alternative is feeling nothing.
Grace Caroline Currey plays Becky as a woman whose terror is competing with her exhaustion. She is not afraid to die so much as too tired to fight. Currey carries the physical reality of cramping muscles and dehydration and bird attacks without losing the emotional thread. Virginia Gardner plays Shiloh as the friend who performs confidence for a camera and has none in reserve. Gardner shows the cracks in the influencer bravado as the situation strips it away. Jeffrey Dean Morgan appears briefly as Becky’s father James, and his absence drives more of the film than his presence.
Scott Mann directs from a script he wrote with Jonathan Frank, and the construction is brutally economical. The camera spends the second half pinned to a tiny platform with two performers and a few hundred feet of empty air. Mann uses long vertiginous drops below the actors so the void is always in frame. The sound design strips away ambient noise until the wind and the creak of failing metal carry the dread. Drone shots that pull straight down the tower do more work than any line of dialogue.
The film knows exactly what it is and refuses to apologize for it. The script leans on contrivance and a twist that strains credibility. None of that matters when the camera is staring down 2,000 feet. Fall trades character depth for sustained physical dread and delivers on the trade. It is a lean genre exercise that wants your palms sweating and gets the job done.