REVIEW: FALL

• Director: Scott Mann
• Writer: Jonathan Frank, Scott Mann
• Stars: Grace Caroline Currey, Virginia Gardner, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Mason Gooding

Review

After a horrible climbing accident in which her husband died, Becky (Currey) is in a bad place. Drinking herself to death and pushing everyone in her life away. A timely call from her friend Hunter, (Gardner) who was with Becky at the time of the accident, comes to her with a plan – To climb the 2000 foot B67 TV tower. Becky eventually agrees, seeing that she can scatter her husbands ashes and conquer her fear and claim her life back… three birds with one stone… at least that’s the plan. Through a series of unfortunate incidents, Becky and Hunter get stuck on a small platform, way up in the air, with no way down, no food, no water and circling vultures.

Like other ‘stuck without hope’ films (Adam Green’s Frozen or Open Water come to mind) director Scott Mann pulls no punches here. Making sure you feel the hopelessness of the situation and of course the vertigo inducing height. Let me declare something here – I have a very real fear of heights and Fall does absolutely nothing to quell that fear! The effects really do create that height illusion and it is really well done. Barring two early shots, the rest of it looks as real as you would want it to.

Currey & Gardner make a good on screen pairing, both women get right into their roles which heightens (no pun intended) the fear for when trouble strikes. Both Currey and Gardner are very convincing given the setting and the small amount of room they have to work in.

Fall is not afraid to be cruel to its characters and in the genre of disaster/survival thrillers, that is to be expected, if not even demanded. A well paced film with twists that are both obvious and in one particular case surprising and brutal, Fall is an anxiety inducing but fun ride, two thousand feet up.

Fall opens in Cinemas August 12 (USA)

Ryan Morrissey-Smith | Twitter: @TigersMS78