Fall – Film Review

For best friends Becky and Hunter, life is all about conquering fears and pushing limits. However, after they climb 2,000 feet to the top of a remote, abandoned radio tower, they find themselves stranded with no way down. Now, their expert climbing skills are put to the ultimate test as they desperately fight to survive the elements, a lack of supplies, and vertigo-inducing heights.

When was the last time you saw a movie that legitimately had you holding your breath from feeling so uncomfortable throughout the entire running time? For me, it was 2019’s Uncut Gems, in which Adam Sandler delivered the best performance of his career in a film that never let go of its viciously tight grip on you.

And although Scott Mann‘s Fall isn’t quite as nerve-wracking as Uncut Gems for example, it does come fairly close. This is an extremely uncomfortable watch, especially if you’re someone like me who has vertigo and is afraid of heights. Watching Fall was a challenge in all the best ways.

The film constantly cuts to shots of the two girls standing atop this massive tower before panning downwards, showing us, the viewer, just how high up in the air these two are. Even when things go relatively well for them both at first, we cannot share their celebrations because we know that something terrible is going to happen.

For about an hour and forty-five minutes, Mann ensures that we never have an opportunity to breathe or relax ourselves. We’ve seen movies like this before such as 127 Hours, but if they’re done right like Fall, then they can be some of the most genuinely terrifying movies ever made because of just how scarily real it feels.

Grace Caroline Currey and Virginia Gardner are absolutely fantastic in the roles of Becky and Shiloh respectively. These two honestly felt like best friends in real life, and you can almost always feel the chemistry seeping right off of them in virtually every single scene.

There’s also a great small role for the always wonderful Jeffrey Dean Morgan. He may be delivering one of his more relatively tame performances in recent years here, but it’s still great to see him get some good roles. And in the brief scenes that he appears in, Mason Gooding is great as Dan.

The script is also quite terrific as well. Does it do anything game-changing for cinema? Absolutely not. But it works phenomenally as a survival thriller script. It’s honestly one of the best in the genre in years. It also features a totally shocking twist towards the end that you’ll never see coming, no matter how much you try to guess it.

Fall is the most uncomfortable moviegoing experience you’ll have all year in the best way possible. Scott Mann’s direction is sublime and the lead performances are gripping.