By Marc S. Sanders
Sometimes a movie will simply cover a circumstance. The crew of Apollo 13 end up lost in space. James Franco gets trapped behind a rock for 127 Hours. Chrissy Watkins and Alex Kintner wind up abandoned in shark infested Open Water. I recall Ryan Reynolds being buried alive in a coffin for ninety minutes. Haven’t seen that one yet. Not interested, honestly.
Any of you curious to see what happens when two expert rock climbers neither of whom wear safety gloves, while one wears Converse All Star high tops, (Pass the grain of salt, please!) opt to climb a rusty 2,049-foot-high television antenna and get stuck at the top? That’s about all there is to Fall, directed by Scott Mann.
Granted, there is a thin slice of characterization layered on the crust. Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) is severely depressed and maybe suicidal following a rock-climbing accident that took her beloved husband Dan (Mason Gooding) away from her. Fifty-one weeks later, she still defies her father’s (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) pleas to help her. Yet, her best friend Hunter (Virginia Gardner) urges Becky to accompany her while she records their climb up the infamous B-67 TV Tower, located in the Mojave Desert. Hunter’s thousands of online followers will be in awe!
Subtle beats of conversation show that Hunter may be hiding a secret from Becky. Frankly, if you’ve at least read a Dr. Seuss book, you’ll be much more intuitive than Becky, and know what the secret is. So why should I waste the keystrokes spelling it out for you?
The climb up is pretty unchallenging as the young ladies are tethered together by about fifty feet of climbing rope. The photography will dazzle you though. They’ve got their cell phones and a drone for some masterful sights of the wide expanse of desert and unlimited blue sky. One water bottle between the two should be enough. The vultures are nothing to worry about as they are feasting on a near dead coyote down below. Only thing is that we know something the girls don’t. As the ascent gets higher into the upwards void, the frailer the rusted ladder becomes, and the more bolts and beams pop off. You can guess what happens next and follow the film all the way down to its end.
What saves Fall from being a waste of time is Scott Mann’s use of his camera. IMDb states that he insisted on not doing green screen work. If he was going to be this daring, the climb up and the need for the ladies to hold out on a grilled, narrow platform high above had to be as authentically real as possible. Mann’s team built a duplicate antenna on the top of a high mountain location, that reached as close to the structure’s actual height as possible. So, the height matches that of the real structure. The recreated antenna was apparently shorter though. Hey, I was convinced of everything I was looking at from a scorching sun to heavy breezes to sunburns and running mascara and the eventual exhaustion, fear and despair the girls had to endure while trying to survive close falls and drops.
The edits will make shout and gasp as one of the girls slips or barely holds on to a bar or rope or hand that could give way. It’s not as impressive as some of the material in Cliffhanger. Remember that opening? The enormity of the elevation also does not compare to what Robert Zemeckis did across the open chasm between the World Trade Center Towers either (The Walk). However, there’s much to look at and take in with a strong sense of vertigo and shortness of breath.
Becky and Hunter’s dilemma left me with trying to figure how they’ll get out this scenario. You account for what they climbed up with and what might be at the top of the pole for them to use. You also consider the injuries they suffer when they attempt a risk at gaining an advantage. Most of what is tried seems apparent. Though I question their short cut knowledge for charging a cell phone or drone battery.
I was skeptical of their plight as well. Expert climbers would wear gloves while climbing a rock or an old rusty two thousand foot high ladder. Converse sneakers with no tread on the soles? C’mon! As well, this giant, narrow thing is erect in the middle of the scorching, desert sun. These girls ever experience going down an aluminum playground slide? My hands were burning just looking at every rickety piece of this thing. How did Becky and Hunter avoid painful skin tears and callouses? How did they not have any sort of involuntary reflex against touching what should be burning hot, rusted metal?
Despite the unnecessary, or maybe neglected liberties, the film takes, Fall is watchable. Just take your bathroom breaks during the two “it’s only a nightmare” scenes that look lifted straight out of Jaws: The Revenge. When will filmmakers realize how stupid and unnecessary an “it’s only a nightmare” scene is? The only time it worked was in Aliens. Beyond that, this stale uncreative kind of filler is there simply to muster a jump scare that does not advance a character or teeter a plot. Just stop with the nonsense.
Fall offers a situation I never want to end up in. I’ve actually developed a fear of heights as I’ve gotten older. Yet, I’d love to observe from the safety of my home theater how others like Becky and Hunter respond. The ending is acceptable with a mild twist. I think I would have embraced this fictional circumstance much more had the story been more frank with itself and the characters who were selected to play this foolhardy game.
One thing I’ve learned though. Nursery rhymes will not help you get your mind off the heights. Thing about what happened to Humpty Dumpty, or if we all play Ring Around The Rosie. Yikes!!!!!!!
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 