Fall is one of those films that basically just has one location and the challenge is to try and keep the film captivating for the full runtime. I think there’s a decent amount of potential in that kind of idea but this premise in particular was pretty limited the whole time. There’s only so much you can do with the tower the whole time and this movie had to resort to some desperate tactics the whole time. Needless to say, this film was not a winner.

The movie starts by introducing us to Becky and her best friend Hunter. They both like climbing a lot but it is a rather dangerous sport and Becky’s husband ends up dying during one such adventure. A year passes and Becky has not been able to recover at all. So Hunter shows up and tells Becky that it’s time to face her fears by climbing an incredibly dangerous radio tower that was decommissioned years ago. Naturally that means it is not up to code anymore and so climbing it is going to be pretty rough. Hunter needs the views for her social media though and Becky is weak to peer pressure so she agrees to go on the mission. Will this be a fatal mistake?

The first thing you’ll notice here is that the film loves going for shock value. We see a dog being eaten alive early on in the film in such a gratuitous scene that it dooms the whole movie. At this point there was literally no way the film was going to redeem itself. That just doesn’t happen. Then later on we have a bird getting eaten alive and so the film really wasn’t holding back on the animal violence. Those were 2 really poor options and yeah the film never did even come close to recovering.

I also feel like the movie wasn’t particularly confident in its own plot. For that reason one of the characters wears a fairly impractical outfit which she says is to appease the viewers and get clicks. It’s sadly realistic but still not a good thing for the movie because it’s just taken to the extreme. I would say live action movies don’t generally have a big fanservice issue but this is an actual plot point and the camera angles are always at the ready so this is another thing that is not in the film’s favor.

Going 3 for 3, the film also has a pretty big writing issue. The script is super low effort with the characters swearing up a storm and so they forget to ever make them all that likable. Hunter is being way too pushy about Becky climbing this super dangerous tower and is then irresponsible as well. Forgetting to pack any food is an absolutely massive oversight. Then we also learn more about their past and it turns out that Hunter was no true friend at all. That was really unnecessary and just added extra drama for no real reason. You really shouldn’t do that, it’s another desperate move on the film’s part that doesn’t enhance the experience at all.

I’d also say it’s the worst possible timing to mention this while you are stuck high up in the sky like this. It’s only a good idea if you want to get pushed off. As for Becky, she’s also not likable as she takes out her grief on everybody else. It’s fine not to have moved on after a year but then you need to be able to internalize this pretty well and not just double down on the mistakes. You also shouldn’t let yourself get manipulated so easily and make no mistake, she was easily handled by Hunter. Just not a good idea because usually peer pressure is done in a negative way. It doesn’t have to be that way but that’s usually how it goes.

The film handles its twist pretty well. It feels like the twist was all anybody would talk about for this film after it came out because it was so legendary and I do think that part was handled pretty well. I still have some logic issues with the film though that are hard to overlook. For starters when Hunter heads back down for the drone, why not use it right then? Instead of making a 20/80 jump to try to get back up, use it right away. If you can get help then you will have pulled off a great moment. You could probably even use it to carefully guide the remaining phone down. The low battery issue would have come up either way but they didn’t know that at the time.

You’ll probably have to stretch your disbelief the most when night time comes. You just don’t buy that the characters wouldn’t roll off while asleep or that a big gust of wind wouldn’t blow them away. They are way too sentient and operating logically even after having been up there for well over 24 hours. Adrenaline can get you pretty far but not quite this far. They’re still able to climb and move around with maneuvers that take up a whole lot of upper body strength. It’s especially a stretch for Becky who has spent the last year drinking endless amounts of beer at the bar and just lounging her life away. You will keep some strength but enough to pull off all these stunts? Nah, I don’t even believe it for Hunter much less Becky. Too much energy was spent just getting up the tower, let alone being stuck up there for so long.

Beyond that, the film shows how hopeless the whole thing was pretty well. Once you are on that tower there aren’t a whole lot of options available to you. Climbing that is a bad idea in itself but people do bad ideas for clicks all the time online so it’s not super surprising. It doesn’t make the characters any more likable though. I think what would have made this film more likable would be if they had a great reason for climbing like someone was offering money that they needed for a sick relative or something. You’d get the reasoning a bit better.

Of course the film would obviously still fail if it didn’t clean up the animal violence though. There’s no real getting around that particularly with how violent those moments were. The one location type films can be hit or miss and at the end of the day this one was a miss. We did check off the box of having super mean passerbys though as two guys show up just to really stick it to the leads. Perhaps unnecessary but also a bit funny because what are the odds these guys would be that level of corrupt right? Like at least call the cops after stealing the van or something.

Overall, Fall is not a film that I would recommend. Even aside from all the unnecessary moments, it’s just not a film that is very confident in its own story. I think deep down the writers knew that there was no shut things would work out after being stuck on top and so they had to add a whole lot of drama to try and distract you. The main problem is that the distractions simply don’t work so at the end of the day you’re just shaking your head the whole time. If you want a film with a whole lot more tension you should probably keep on searching elsewhere.

Overall 2/10