Fall

 3/4

Starring: Grace Caroline Currey, Virginia Gardner

Rated PG-13 for Bloody Images, Intense Peril, and Strong Language

Not to be confused with the 2006 film "The Fall"

The more you're afraid of heights, the more terrifying you'll find "Fall."  I am afraid of heights.  I remember getting all tingly and afraid to move on the diving platforms at the local pool.  And when I looked over the side, I could see and feel myself jumping off before I actually did it.  I got that same sensation while watching "Fall."  That is to the film's credit.

After losing her husband in a freak climbing accident a year ago, Becky (Currey) has shied away from life, preferring the easy path of drowning her pain in booze and pills.  Her father (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and BFF Hunter (Gardner) are worried.  To bring her back to life, social media daredevil Hunter has decided that they will climb a 2,000 foot radio tower to spread her husband's ashes and send him off in style.  But just when they decide to come back down, the ladder breaks off.  Now they're stuck on a ledge "the size of a pizza" nearly a mile in the sky with no way down.  And no one who knows they're there.

Survival movies like this are not complicated endeavors.  If you're looking for depth and nuance, go rent a Stanley Kubrick movie.  Only two things matter in a movie like this: we have to have the visceral sensation that we are there with the characters, and the filmmakers have to come up with new and inventive crises for them to solve.  The film succeeds on both counts.  Credit cinematographer MacGregor for making us believe that we are on that ledge with the girls.  The sense of vertigo is all encompassing and the two are in constant danger.  There are at times when the tension is so high that you'll forget to take a breath.

If only the two characters were more interesting.  Director Scott Mann made the correct choice to cast no name stars for his film.  A movie like this works best when we identify with the characters as people we could be as opposed to their star power.  While Grace Caroline Currey and Virginia Gardner are competent actresses, the characters they have to play are not well written, and more importantly, they're not especially charismatic.  They don't have a lot of screen presence, and without strong writing to back them up, getting the audience on their side is tougher than it should be.

"Fall" is not a perfect movie.  Hunter and Becky do some amazingly stupid things, but considering the genre, that's a given.  The film also steals from other (and better) movies in such obvious ways that the term "copycat" applies (victims include "Vertical Limit" and "The Descent").  Still, if you're going to steal, then steal from the best.

What is unforgivable is the final 10 minutes.  The twist ending is a gimmick.  There's no other way to put it.  It's such a cliche (no spoilers, although I am tempted) that the film would have been more fresh if he didn't use it.  If Mann was confident enough in his film, as any good director should, he wouldn't feel the need to be so desperate to shock.  Rather than elevating the film, the ending nearly tanks the movie.

Still, for undemanding adrenaline, "Fall" fits the bill.  Just see it in the theater.  Trust me.

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