Fall review: survival movie takes horror to new heights

Fall is a new, vertigo-inducing horror movie that follows two adrenaline junkies who attempt to recover from a personal tragedy by regaining their passion by climbing a huge, 2,000 ft radio tower. It's not the most conventional choice, but the duo is up for the challenge after a bit of convincing. 

The film opens with best friends Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) and Hunter (Virginia Gardner) who are out climbing alongside Becky's husband Dan (Mason Gooding), when the latter suffers a tragic accident and falls to his death. 

51 weeks after this tragedy, Becky has isolated herself from her friends and family and spends most of her time getting drunk and playing back old voicemails from Dan, unable to fully move on from what happened to him. She's stuck in a dark place until one day Hunter arrives with a proposition.

The duo hasn't climbed together since that fateful day and thrill-seeker Hunter is desperate to get the old Becky back, so she shows her photos of the rather intimidating radio tower she wants them to climb together. Becky sleeps on it and eventually agrees.

However, this fun expedition turns into their worst nightmare when they reach the platform at the very top of the tower, and the ladder breaks, crashing into the desert floor beneath them, leaving the two alone without a phone signal or any immediate help. And that's where we stay for the rest of the movie.

One-location films can be tricky to pull off, but it seems impossible not to be engaged with Fall. For a start, the surrounding area looks terrifyingly realistic and you feel like you're up on the tower with them, meaning every time the tower shakes or characters look down, you're on the edge of your seat.

Thanks to some seriously impressive special effects and camera angles designed to make you feel nauseous, the movie is highly entertaining and quite the thrill ride, as you try to work out how they're going to make it out of this horrifying situation.

As well as this, the dynamic between Becky and Hunter is fun to watch as they attempt to reconcile after Dan's death. Hunter is clearly a free-spirit, obsessed with capturing footage for her following under the pseudonym "Danger D", so this tower is her idea of heaven.  

Meanwhile, Becky clearly has some reservations about the whole thing and the two do clash at points, with one scene, in particular, seeing them having a heart-to-heart about what happened with Dan where some difficult truths are revealed. Considering the fact the movie mostly centers on the two women, they both do an excellent job of keeping us engaged, and both feel like they've got a lot of layers to them.

The characters are flawed and believable, and although on the surface Fall is a film about a scary tower and getting trapped, there's more to it than that when you realize that they both have their secrets and regrets.

As with some fictional survival movies, Fall does require you to suspend your disbelief at points as there are some thrilling moments that seem like they just would not happen in real life. Still, there are some epic scenes and some devastating ones too, with the movie taking us on a rollercoaster ride with plenty of twists and turns to keep us engaged.

Fall feels like Scott Mann's best film since his directorial debut The Tournament and has certainly proven he knows how to craft a thrilling film that, despite its intimate location, is a nail-biting experience where you're never quite sure what's going to happen next. 

Fans of both the horror genre and survival movies should have a good time with this one, as it's an adrenaline rush even when you're in a comfy cinema seat or in your own home. It's wildly entertaining and might make you think twice about taking on any extreme climbing challenges!

Fall had its European premiere at Arrow FrightFest 2022, and was released on August 12 in the US. It is released in cinemas worldwide on September 2.