This suspenseful thriller is a sweat-inducing predicament for two friends who climb to the top of a TV tower in the desert in quest of adventure. “Fall” is a terrifying experience from the heights.

Details of Fall

Scenes in Scott Mann’s movie Fall, such as the one-handed selfie taken from a rusted grating at the height of two thousand feet, are nearly unwatchable even if you don’t experience vertigo. However, this is the kind of button-pushing misery of a film that makes your eyelids sweat with worry if you are a baby about heights and need to steel yourself just to ascend the ladder to the loft.

Not even a full-fledged case of vertigo; I’m not frightened of heights per se, but there were moments throughout the film that gave me the slightest feeling of nausea. You have been forewarned. The idea behind “Fall” seems promising, but the film fails due to poor acting, editing, and other technical decisions. It doesn’t so much fall to Earth as it floats off into the ether of cinematic obscurity.

The Storyline of “Fall”

In the opening scene, Becky (Grace Caroline Currey), her husband Dan (Mason Gooding), and their best friend Hunter (Virginia Gardner) are climbing a steep mountain face when disaster strikes, and Dan falls to his death. A year later, Becky is hiding from Hunter and her worried father, James (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, in a role so small it’s like doing a friend a favour by playing it) by drowning her sorrows in alcohol. Hunter, an Instagram sensation, approaches Becky with a proposal: the two of them will ascend an abandoned 2,000-foot TV tower in the middle of nowhere to finally get over Dan’s death and scatter his ashes from the top. Naturally, everything goes horribly wrong, and Becky and Hunter are left high atop the tower with no means of escape and no way to contact anyone who might be able to help them.

Most of “Fall,” which was shot in the Mojave Desert, takes place atop the tower, where the film benefits from some good adrenaline from the first ascent and the subsequent disaster caused by the fall of a ladder. Instead of having a terrible set-up act full of clichés and bad filmmaking, one version of the film begins with the climb, allowing the characters’ pain to emerge via their dialogues on the way up (it also would have helped reduce the runtime on a 107-minute movie that should be closer to 87). For the most part, the movie works best when Becky and Hunter start their actual ascent because that’s when Mann has the most control and can effectively ramp up the tension.

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The momentum of “Fall” then grinds to a halt. As the film progresses through its third and fourth acts, the level of absurdity increases due to the inclusion of vultures, drones, and a secret revealed to Hunter that is more melodramatic than realistic. When compared to better “stuck” flicks like “Open Water,” which succeeds by making viewers feel like they’re genuinely caught in the jagged waves of the ocean, “Fall” falls flat. Both Currey and Gardner put out physically impressive performances (this production certainly looks taxing), but they are let down by immature writing that fails to convey the genuine horror that the characters would feel in this scenario. Thin dialogue, flashy cinematography, and aggressive edits undermine “Fall’s” potential nightmare unless we get into the situation in which Becky and Hunter find themselves.

Fall is a movie that doesn’t go deep on the emotional front, but it’s smarter than it has to be, and it’s as gory as your twisted little heart was hoping it would be. The film fails to impress. And yet, it is a film that caused me to exclaim, “Oh, my god!” And that’s saying a lot.

Last but not least, “Fall” was made to be watched on a massive screen. Therefore Lionsgate is releasing it in theatres rather than sending it straight to video on demand this weekend. There is a lot of literature discussing the effectiveness of “event movies” in luring moviegoers back to theatres. Unfortunately, the public will be let down by this attempt to assist the theatre industry in surviving.

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