"Fall" effectively wrings all the acrophobic anxiety and palm-sweating from a daredevil-dumb premise

Fall (2022)

Shark-infested waters, a chairlift, an elevator, between a rock and a canyon wall, a sauna — you’ve seen survival thrillers where characters get stuck in the worst possible places. Here’s a new one: at the top of a 2,000-foot TV tower. Doing for palm-sweating what “47 Meters Down” did for asphyxiation, “Fall” is a ridiculously effective exercise in acrophobic anxiety out of a daredevil-dumb premise. If you’re okay with your popcorn getting soggy from your sweaty palms, this is a nerve-jangling popcorn movie and a late-summer surprise that isn’t IP-related.

After a rock-climbing accident that led to the death of her husband Dan (Mason Gooding), Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) has spent a year drowning in her grief and officially hit rock bottom. Her father (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) can’t console her when she doesn’t want help. About to end it all, Becky gets a call from best friend Hunter (Virginia Gardner), who was climbing the mountain with them both when Dan fell. Being an adrenaline-junkie vlogger, Hunter eventually convinces Becky to be her partner-in-crime again because facing her fears is what Dan would have wanted. There’s an abandoned B67 TV tower in the California desert that Hunter wants to climb, and Becky decides to scatter Dan’s ashes at the top. Not even a “No Trespassing: Danger of Death” sign can make them change their minds — or the sight of vultures eating away a half-dead animal. Once they make their way up the rickety structure, Becky and Hunter reach the top, and everything goes fine from there! Just kidding. 

Not every movie can brag that it earns the visceral reaction it seeks, but mission accomplished: "Fall" is an excruciatingly tense white-knuckler. Director Scott Mann wrings every possible opportunity out of this concept to stress the hell out of his audience. Every time we think Becky and Hunter are closer to being saved (whether it’s by using Hunter’s drone or one of their phones), another complication comes along and puts them right back to square one. While this isn’t a horror movie in the traditional sense, there are enough gasp-inducing details, like close-ups of rusty screws loosening as Becky and Hunter climb the ladder rungs to the top, to remind one of watching a “Final Destination” movie where lingering danger is a ruthless predator.

Making us care whether or not Becky and Hunter get back down safely to the ground is all in the hands of the two actresses playing them. Yes, sure, these characters should have chosen a much safer option for Becky to overcome her grief. But—and it’s a big but—Grace Caroline Currey (2019’s “Shazam!”) is so emotionally available that she gets us to believe the train of thought for Becky’s choices, and Virginia Gardner (2019's "Starfish") is so charismatic and free-spirited that Hunter would’ve climbed the tower anyway. Even if Mann didn’t actually place his two performers 2,000 feet high and leave them to their own devices, the film still asks a lot from them physically and emotionally, and Currey and Gardner sell every emotional beat during terrifying conditions. Made to look like they’re out-Tom Cruising Tom Cruise, the height effects are also pretty seamless. 

Writer-director Scott Mann and co-writer Jonathan Frank’s script does overstep a bit with a character secret (which isn’t hard to see coming as soon as it’s set up). When “Fall” recovers from that with slightly more nuance than one is expecting, it does make a big narrative choice (something “47 Meters Down” executed with a little more success). Aside from the unnecessary need for overcomplicating the drama, “Fall” accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do in spades: worsen your fear of heights or give you a new phobia. Just get ready to say “Nope!” more times than Daniel Kaluuya’s character in Jordan Peele’s latest. 

Grade: B

Lionsgate is dropping “Fall” (107 min.) in theaters on August 12, 2022.