Fall

**Fall is 47 Meters Down but with heights instead of depths - 47 Meters Up.** Fall keeps your stomach in your throat with its dizzying heights and anxiety-inducing peril. The movie’s plot is extremely thin, but that’s what you would expect from a film with this premise. Grace Curry and Virginia Gardner’s despair seemed authentic through their convincing performances. Panic and distress filled every shot as the camera soaked in the unbelievable heights and endless landscapes. Scott Mann once again directs an emotional suspense-laden film that feels incredibly similar to 47 Meters Down, even borrowing an identical plot twist. Fall stretched on a little longer than needed, but I appreciated the staggering suspense and character development that elevated a meager concept to vertigo-inducing heights.

Fall is a sweaty palms, nerve racking ride, that plays, with gleeful sadism, on one the most basic and widespread, of human fears. An Acrophobic's worst nightmare, Fall takes a very basic premise and uses it to good effect, building a primal, instinctively terrifying, anxiety soaked action flick, of quite literally, dizzying heights. This is, somewhat antithetically, both an easy and hard watch rolled into one. I frequently found myself holding my breath, tensing, jumping and having to take breaks to get over my own sense of fear, at what I was witnessing. I was heavily invested in the main characters, wanting to see them safely escape their horrible predicament, in spite of their reckless decision to climb an obviously rusted, dilapidated tower. In short, great edge of your seat stuff. Just goes to show how much can be achieved with a modest budget and a lot of inspiration.

Right. First things first. Understood that you erect a 2000ft television relay tower back in the day, but when that industry moves to satellite delivery, why on Earth would anyone just leave this gradually rusting structure standing - only for it to come crashing down one day when the metal fatigue has won out? Hmmm! Anyway, luckily for us the planner's ineptitude allowed for "Becky" (Grace Caroline Currey) and her friend "Hunter" (Virginia Gardner) to go climb it. It's quite a big deal for the former woman - she had been free-climbing almost one year earlier with her friend and her husband "Dan" (Mason Gooding) when disaster struck and she has spent much of the intervening period married to Jack Daniels. Scorning any sensible planning - food, gloves etc. up they go - there is a ladder - and are soon at the top surveying the immensity of the view. Time to go down, the ladder gives way. The two are lucky to have the platform right at the top to take refuge on, but their bag - water and drone contained within - falls 50 feet and balances precariously on a redundant satellite dish below. What's to do? The plot really does take a quite cynical turn when they fire a flare to attract the attention of some men in a nearby camper van, only for the guys to spot them and then proceed to steal their car! Otherwise, this is really just a remarkable feat of photography that certainly had my palms sweating. Director Scott Mann and the cinematographer (MacGregor) do manage to effectively draw us into the two friend's predicament and if you are even vaguely acrophobic, then this film can be a really tough watch at times. Sadly, though, in the search for characterisation we discover that even at altitude, there is a place for a rather tiresome melodrama. Thereafter it is quite difficult to warm to either of the women who are being harried by some hungry buzzards as they perch! The ending is not good. To be fair, it isn't straightforward either, it has a few quirks to keep us on our toes - but they are not terribly realistic quirks. Enjoy is not the correct word for this film - I cannot say I was too relaxed for much of my time in the cinema tonight, but if this is to be seen at all, then it does need that big screen. On television it will lose much of it's photographic impact and that really is all this film is worth watching for - the acting and repetitive "Are you OK?" dialogue leaves much to be desired.

**might contain spoilers** What a great murder mystery film. As an amateur climber, I too was initially put off by the amount of unprofessional climbing techniques. However, if they were truly climbing/solo enthusiasts, how could they not get injured way before they take on any big challenges? (And from a filmmaking perspective, with climbing being such a popular sports, surly it is not hard to get some random joe from the gym to tell the film crew that those techniques are horrible! also there are other suspicious common-sense defying points later…) The answer of course, what we watched is just simply a **recounting of Becky’s version of what transpired!!!** Then all the inaccuracies makes perfect sense as that’s how you get the authorities to believe why the “accidents” happened in the first place — sheer negligence and amateur skills! I believe what happened was that Becky found out that she was cheated on, then plotted to get rid of the asshat by either screwing with the cam placements and/or - as filmed but with a malignant intent - to get rid of the rope too liberally. And no one else knows exactly how good the cam placements are or whether they were tempered with - Hunter is way above them busy down-climbing! Then, this explains perfectly her year-long depression as even if not fully planned out, her imo premeditated actions naturally put herself in even deeper sense of guilt. Then there’s the forever unknowable fact that whether the tower trips is truly initiated by Hunter. Possibly Becky saw Hunter is living a guilt-free life and had another urge for murder and proposed to feed Hunter this great youtube/instagram clickbait trip to convince her to come along! Although the film depicts that Hunter is very heartwarming at times, it’s entirely plausible that Hunter **is** in fact the care-free personality that she demonstrates in **all her videos online!** (which might makes her more murderable in Becky’s eye). So Becky could be using a very high-IQ way of framing her victims as compassionate sweethearts. Finally, the biggest telltale sign that the final accident is premeditated (and possibly intended by the filmcrew/writer) is that when Becky lastly went for Hunter’s body to drop down the phone, she **instinctively — rightfully so for a climber** clipped the carabiner to the lowest stable point which is the as yet unbroken ladder!!!(and the film gave this a real good close-up) Why on earth wouldn’t Hunter do that when she went down to retrieve the bag???!!! This is not just bad climbing, this defies common sense! We were all screaming how stupid it was of Hunter to do what she did in the bag sequence and now we know, **these are all extremely likely fabrications recounted by Becky at the end of the accident!** Lastly, some keen chinese filmgoers also noted the “mistake” on the poster where in fact **the ladders are failing while Becky’s at the top and Hunter is still climbing!** Maybe this is a hint from the production team ;) **welp anyways it’s just a theory :p I probably watched too many asian sope-operas**