Fall (2022)

Score: 4.5 / 5

I love this movie, and I love this kind of movie. It's the sort of survivalist/disaster movie I can hardly get enough of, even when they start to feel a bit derivative or repetitive. As part of the horror genre, they often go hand-in-hand with what I like to call the "killer nature" subgenre, such as movies like The Shallows or Rogue or Backcountry, when some kind of monstrous animal begins a killing spree, usually inflicted on a small group of people trapped or isolated in a remote location. Think of the swimmers in Open Water, the townspeople in Lake Placid or Piranha, the people stuck in the car in Cujo or the spaceship in Life. This is like those but without the animals -- and yes, some large vultures play an important part in this movie -- and virtually everything that could go wrong goes, indeed, horribly wrong. Actually, this film is most like 47 Meters Down in several ways, but that's all I'll say about that at this point.

I have only very rarely gotten sick in a cinema -- I puked violently in Gravity -- but I got quite close in this screening of Fall. It's a perfect storm, from the first scene of three rock climbers on a cliff face somewhere in the American West, when after a scare one of them falls to his death. A year later, his wife Becky (Grace Caroline Currey), with whom he was climbing, is a depressed alcoholic who can't move on. She even avoids her concerned and somewhat tough-loving father, played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan in a weird bit part. When their third climber, a close friend named Hunter (Virginia Gardner, looking very much like the lovechild of Reese Witherspoon and Florence Pugh), shows up with a new climbing opportunity, Becky wants nothing to do with it. After some convincing ("face your fears" and all that), they embark on a trip to an abandoned -- and condemned, it should be remembered -- 2000-foot tower in the middle of a desert. Hunter, an Insta-influencer, wants to do it for fun; she persuades Becky to join for herself, for their friendship, and for Becky's late husband, whose ashes they intend to scatter to the winds from the lower stratosphere.

The intro doesn't take long, thankfully, and soon we're with the young women as they begin to climb. I cannot express to you all the importance of seeing this film on a huge screen with amazing sound; I actually want to go see it in IMAX if possible, though I'm not sure my constitution could handle it. As someone who isn't even particularly scared of heights, this movie might have created a brand new phobia in me. Not even when the characters got twenty feet off the ground, I could feel my stomach clenching and rising in my abdomen. The tower is rusty and falling apart, and the camera repeatedly cuts close to screws as they jiggle and, sometimes, fall as the girls climb. We know, even if they don't, that another tragedy is about to strike. It's only a matter of time. Climbing a 2000-foot metal ladder in the middle of the desert is bad enough; halfway up, the cage around the ladder disappears and they climb completely exposed to the wind with no safety nets, literal or figurative.

Cinematographer MacGregor deserves many awards for his work on this film. The camera makes the Mojave Desert appear something akin to paradise, and yet the story imbues so much hellishness that the contrast is constantly jarring. As the characters climb, he bobs and weaves and flies around them with glee, relishing the trap they're setting for themselves; he seems determined to take us on a visual roller coaster ride, zooming up and down and around faster than I could always comprehend but not so fast I couldn't feel each lurch deep in my digestive tract. Audible moans in the auditorium told me I wasn't the only one getting queasy from the height. Or the tension. But the girls do, finally, make it to the top, where they take plenty of videos and photos but can't upload them due to a lack of cell service. (That's another red flag, in case you weren't sure where all this was going.)

Before ten steps on the way back down, the ladder gives out. It swings, unattached but by the base, backward over the daylit void, with Becky screaming for dear life. By the time the two girls are back up top on a platform smaller than a truck wheel, the ladder for the top 500 feet or so is completely gone, crashed in pieces so far below they need binoculars to see. With no service, no food or water, and no way down, there is little for the women to do but sit and roast under the blazing sun. It doesn't help that nobody knows they're stuck up there. What can they do? They try just about everything conceivable, and virtually nothing works. It's an endurance exercise for the characters and for the audience, and the tension almost never lets up.

Frankly, I'd have preferred a slightly streamlined version of this film. I could have done without the intro and exposition and started as the women arrived at the tower. All the backstory and drama (which may not be necessary anyway, but here we are) could and maybe should have been presented during the climb. While I understand the desire to sympathize with the characters, and I think movies like this do require a bit of that relatable, inspiring gumption, it's still a bit of a slog each time the trauma and drama (and extraneous characters) come up. Is it all a bit silly? Sure, I suppose, but I never once wanted to laugh for most of this movie due to the death grip on tone and style by director Scott Mann. I believed every instant of the story, even the annoying bits, and as such it feels like a 107-minute-long adrenaline pump directly into the heart. It could easily have been cut by 15 or 20 minutes which would have made it more endurable as entertainment, but I respect the push for a more experiential time frame. The editing is a bit overexcited but the cinematography is so eye-popping I didn't really care most of the time, and the droning score gets under your skin something terrible (and that's a good thing!). I don't want to say much else because this movie is an immersive experience; let it take you on its dark, wild ride. And whatever you do, don't look down.