Fallis a small, thrilling feature that perhaps wasn’t viewed by many spectators, and it turns out to be one of the most overlooked motion pictures of 2022. British director Scott Mann is a filmmaker who has made a handful of action thrillers with major stars, includingThe Tournamentwith Robert Carlyle and Ving Rhames,Heiststarring Robert De Niro and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, andFinal Scorewith Dave Bautista and Pierce Brosnan.
This time, Mann’s thriller is a survival feature that successfully combines old-school storytelling with modern technology, while making the movie appear realistic and terrifying at the same time. This film is also a testament to female empowerment, as well as overcoming fears, obstacles, and loss.
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Fall Is A Throwback To Old-Fashioned Survival Thrillers
Fallcenters around Becky Connor (Grace Caroline Currey fromShazam!and the upcoming sequel), a young woman who climbs with her husband Dan (Mason Gooding, who starred in the fifthScreamfilm) and best friend Shiloh Hunter (Virginia Gardner, who looks and has the charisma of a young Reese Witherspoon). When they are rock climbing on a mountain one day, Dan tragically falls to his death, leaving Becky extremely depressed over time, causing her to drink alcohol and consume a lot of pills.
Becky’s depression is reminiscent ofSylvester Stalloneand his role as a skilled mountain climber inCliffhangerwhen he feels guilty about not being able to save his partner’s girlfriend from falling off the mountain they were climbing. One year after Dan’s sudden death, Hunter convinces Becky to join her in climbing a two-thousand-foot TV tower in the desert (inspired by the Sacramento Joint Venture Tower, the tallest structure in California).
While Becky and Hunter manage to go all the way to the top of the radio tower, there are tense and suspenseful moments when the climb will appear to go wrong since the ladder of the tower is very old, rusty, and delicate, with screws about to fall off and the ladder shifting at times. This may remind audiences of tense survival thrillers like William Friedkin’s 1977 filmSorcererwhere Roy Scheider and his men drive through an unstable bridge with dynamite in their truck.
There are also elements of the 1997 thrillerThe Edge, where Anthony Hopkins andAlec Baldwinare colleagues who go up against a large bear after their plane crashes, but have personal conflicts of their own when Hopkins learns that his wife had an affair with Baldwin. InFall, Becky figures out that Hunter had a secret relationship with Dan, but despite this, both women still love and care for each other as friends desperately trying to get rescued from the tower after the ladder completely falls apart.
Fall Effectively Uses Technology In An Old-School Plot
Fallis a survival thriller with a simple storyline, and the protagonists are constantly shown using technology, which also plays an integral part in the film. Hunter uses her iPhone and selfie stick to post photos and videos of her climbing expeditions with Becky onsocial media(Instagram). The selfie stick also comes in handy when trying to retrieve their backpack and gear below the top of the tower. Becky also has her iPhone with images and video clips containing important memories of herself with Hunter and Dan, along with Dan’s phone number and voicemail (so Becky can hear her late husband’s voice for emotional comfort).
Aside from personal use, Becky and Hunter attempt to use their tech devices to reach out for help, so someone can find and rescue them from the tower. In one scene, they place an iPhone inside a shoe with extra padding so that they can drop it all the way to the ground to get a signal and their emergency message would be sent to social media. In another scene, they use Hunter’s drone (which Becky charges with the surge from the light on top of the tower and her gold wedding ring) to send a handwritten message to the diner nearby in the desert. Despite these efforts, the two friends are unsuccessful in retrieving help.
Fall Utilizes Darwin’s Survival of the Fittest Theory
Charles Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” theory is one of the most essential themes of the film. Becky and Hunter do everything they can to stay alive (and awake) on top of the tower, especially when they have no food, a limited water supply, and also have to protect themselves from hungry vultures (some of which brutally kill a dog early on in the film and violently fly around the tower trying to attack the two women).
There’s an intense sequence where Becky fights, kills, and eats part of a vulture that bit her wounded leg, giving her the strength and nourishment to stay alive. While this is a PG-13 rated film, the vulture kill may remind viewers of other violent survival epics likeThe RevenantwhereLeonardo DiCapriois brutally attacked by a bear before killing it, and also skinning a horse to keep himself warm in the snow.
The cinematography inFallis also captivating because the majority of the film takes place on top of the tower, depicting beautiful, sunny images of the desert, and the filmmakers' realistic approach by making the actors appear thousands of feet high up on the tower (even though they were actually around a hundred feet up from the ground). The chemistry between Grace Currey and Virginia Gardner also adds tothe dramatic tension of an old-fashioned thrillerabout survival and the power of overcoming adversity.
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