Fall (2022) Directed by Scott Mann
A large part of the flaws in Fall’s problematic execution stem from its inability to distinguish levels of vertiginous tension, naturally and instinctively generated, from those created with deftness and meticulousness. Fall’s simple, unadorned plot takes the right path to develop its survival thriller dynamic, let’s say it does everything paradoxically well, yet a huge part of that minimalist, prototypical formula is specious.
The film takes as its unit of action and setting a gargantuan and imposing slender TV tower measuring approximately 610 meters high, a little more than twice as high as the Eiffel Tower, the scenario where this dizzying thriller takes place is the primary element that this production has to stimulate, and inevitably boggle: The natural instinct of being afraid of heights. As the dominant ingredient of storytelling construction, it is an absurd and unnecessary platitude, since the unavoidable effects it triggers with its exercise in camera angles that induce the sensation of vertigo is the same that any other analogous action could provoke in an ordinary situation, such as observing a prominent building from the top, or the simple fear of climbing something of high altitude.
The unsettling reactions that Fall engenders are not spectacularly smart technicalities, much less creative devices, they are just natural, innately human effects. The film does not produce vertigo per se, it only triggers our instinctive alarm that we are watching dangerous and daredevil activities. After several weeks of losing her adventurous husband, Becky played by Grace Caroline Currey is brutally depressed and confines herself only to drinking alcohol and shutting herself away in solitude. Becky and her best friend Hunter played by an irritating Virginia Gardner, have always been two girls addicted to extreme activities full of adrenaline, therefore, Hunter proposes Becky to go to climb a huge TV tower that is only 6 hours away from where they are. Becky decides to take this challenge as a kind of therapy to overcome once and for all the loss of her husband and embarks with her friend to live this new adventure, which ironically, will be a struggle between life and death at the top of the tower.
Fall is part thriller, part horror and part melodramatic tragedy, none of them work, nor do they operate under the same circumstances, Scott Mann’s clumsy and heavy-handed direction makes the fragmented genres intersecting with each other appear as a discontinuous narrative that loses the genesis of its taut entertainment. And well, much less helped by the fact that this film has two of the most extraordinarily boneheaded characters I’ve seen in recent years.
This film’s vague sense of character development extends, to astronomically, unfathomable levels, the injudicious awkwardness and gaudy juvenile exaggeration of its ramshackle script. Fall is what you’d expect from a thriller with no cinematic diversity and plenty of dramatic monotony, at least it doesn’t promise to be anything else, but even so, its narrative is too disjointed to cement a solid survival thriller worth watching.
