“Fall” is about two rock-climber girl buddies who ascend a rusty, rickety relic—the 2,000-foot-tall, defunct B67 radio tower out in the desert. For reference, that’s twice the height of the Eiffel Tower, and the World Trade Center’s North Tower was 1,368 feet (1,730 feet including the antenna). It’s got screws rattling around; it creaks and groans in the wind—what could possibly go wrong?
At the very tippy-tippy top is a 1950s-looking lightbulb in a red glass casing—an aircraft warning light. That thing would burn out every three weeks. So, what … they send the Wichita lineman up there, once a month, to shimmy up that last spire with no footholds, 2,000 feet off the deck, where you can see the Earth’s curvature—to change that planned-obsolescence rinky-dink bulb?
See, it’s best not to think these kinds of thoughts; “Fall” deconstructs extremely easily—but it’s nevertheless extremely potent. If you’ve seen “The Descent,” you know whereof I speak. Some producer type clearly said: Let’s take all that nail-biting mayhem from way down below the Earth’s surface, and put it waaaaay up in the sky.
If you have a severe fear of heights, don’t go anywhere near “Fall"; you’ll have a heart attack. Or at least a panic attack. But if you love roller coasters and want to give yourself a guaranteed, good old-fashioned scare equal to the most heart-stopping roller coaster you’ve ever been on, “Fall” is just the movie for you.
Personally, I don’t have an extreme fear of heights; I used to, but my first-ever rock climb was 300 feet with pretty extreme exposure, and it immediately cured my acrophobia. But “Fall” had me cringing in my seat, holding my breath for extended periods of time, and made my palms sweat, which is exactly what a good survival thriller is supposed to do.
The Players
Becky Connor’s (Grace Caroline Currey) husband, Dan (Mason Gooding), died in a rock-climbing accident nearly a year ago. She’s spiraled out of control with grief, drinks too much, and hasn’t yet opened the box containing his cremains, much less planned on where to scatter them.Shiloh Hunter (Virginia Gardner), Becky’s bestie, is an extreme adventure YouTuber. Hunter comes to check up on Becky, and pitches a get-back-in-the-saddle climbing project—climb the above-mentioned decommissioned B67 radio tower. This tower is largely a CGI creation, but it’s based on the 2,049-foot KXTV Tower in Walnut Grove, California, which was built in 1986. It’s the tallest structure in California, the third-tallest guyed mast in the world, and the seventh tallest structure to have ever existed.
Becky gets dragged, kicking and screaming, but understands the need to get back on the horse and slay her depression. However, when they finally summit on the uppermost platform, a tiny octagonal grate floating stratospherically above the yawning desert, a perfect storm of bad luck ensues.
This is due to a combination of poor decisions, ignoring the structure’s obvious decrepit state, and Hunter’s need to video-document everything and tempt the Grim Reaper for social media likes—like doing a one-handed hang, off the observation deck, without being roped in. All this results in a loss of gear crucial for navigating a descent, and leaves them “sittin‘ on top of the world,” and not in the way Howlin’ Wolf originally intended that lyric. They’ve got no water, food, or cell signal.
Similarities to ‘The Descent’
“The Descent” and “The Ascent,” er, “Fall,” share the same premise: grieving woman reunites with her adventure buddy(s) to get her mind off her late husband, and the women get trapped due to a combination of hubris and attempting to tackle an extreme level of daunting physical adventure.They also share similar narrative and emotional beats. Both films contain an 11th-hour plot switcheroo that will be immediately recognizable. My mentioning it here is not a spoiler; it’ll catch you off guard all the same. Overall, “Fall” isn’t as powerful as “The Descent,” but it’s an effective thriller in its own right. I would actually say it’s better; the reason being, “The Descent” is really a horror film and will leave its mark on your soul as horror films do, like a festering disease, whereas “Fall” is thriller scary but clean for the soul. It’s more (no pun intended) uplifting.
Both films also share another common denominator: the clear point of an inner shift from victim to fearless warrior. In “The Descent,” this moment when the gore-soaked last survivor morphs into a thoroughly empowered, havoc-wreaking, wrathful goddess of vengeance is stunning. In “Fall,” it’s less dramatic but also quite satisfying.
The Scares
As mentioned, the dizzying shots of Becky and Hunter climbing the insanely tall tower and peering down into the void will be enough to send even those with a mild fear of heights out into the theater lobby in search of a paper bag to breathe into. The film uses a variety of shots—helicopter shots, drone shots—to convey just how high up these women are. As they reach the halfway mark, a wide shot of the situation is heart-stopping; the tower is so tall that, even at a long distance, its top and bottom are not visible, and the two girls look like a couple of fleas.It may happen that somebody gets a debilitating injury along the way. What does blood attract out in the high desert? You know. And then there are those shaky screws, where the washer and nut rattled loose at least two decades ago.
The quiet moments in “Fall” are sometimes just as sobering and chilling as the “dynos” (leaping from one hold to another), falls, and stumbles that will set viewers’ hearts racing. There’s that element of the impartiality of nature in the outcomes of human affairs, similar to shark thrillers such as “The Shallows” and “Open Water.” After the women argue on their tiny octagonal platform, there’s a beautiful shot of them backlit by the sunrise, silhouetted by the cruel reminder of another scorching hot day, 2,000 feet away from safety. They sit, back to back, like the god Janus, and talk about the faithlessness of men.
As in any survival movie, there’s a fair amount of attempted MacGyvering, a few instances of which involve trying to lower cellphones low enough so that they can pick up a signal. Can they stuff a phone in a Converse high-top sneaker, padded and cushioned with a push-up bra (said bra is, of course, for the enhancement of YouTube likes), throw it off the tower, and attract attention that way? Then again, that might only attract local desert-dwelling riffraff who'd possibly take an uninvited interest in their parked truck.
The Payoff
In spite of an anemic, perfunctory script, the two leads do a fine job of conveying their characters’ long and complicated history, as well as the enormity of their situation, and appear to have actual climbing skills. There are a few climbing situations early on that will have actual rock climbers scoffing, but they mostly have to do with shots of the deceased husband climbing and goofing off in the middle of a life-threatening situation.While the women’s personalities aren’t as clearly delineated as those in “The Descent,” you’ll still very much care about what happens to them. Only Becky’s anguished dad, James (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), appears to be phoning in his performance.
The silver lining of desperate survival situations is that they impart the gift of gratitude and facilitate a long period of taking nothing for granted and living in the moment. This is the addiction of expedition mountain climbing, solo long-distance sailing, long-distance adventure motorcycling, and even vision questing. The extreme discomfort is followed by a curious wistfulness and nostalgia. Forced to be atop a sky-high tower is a white-knuckle, vertiginous endurance test of anxiety-inducing suspense, but shortly after the end, you may find yourself in that funny place one gets to in one’s head, when the roller coaster car arrives back at the starting gate: “Can we go again?”
