After a traumatic year for Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) as she copes with her husband’s (Mason Gooding) death, her best friend Hunter (Virginia Gardner) visits her and invites her for an adventure to take her out of her funk.
After Hunter manages to persuade Becky to confront her fears and climb the remote and abandoned B67 TV tower with her, the unimaginable happens when they reach the top and find themselves stranded 2,000 feet above the ground – with no way down.
Now, their expert climbing skills are put to the ultimate test as they desperately fight to survive the elements, a lack of supplies, and vertigo-inducing heights.
From the start of the movie, you get nauseating tall shots and jump scares (impressively without the help of any ghosts), with each twist in the story carefully telegraphed in advance with a rather obvious direction.
For a person who prefers safety and thought over risks and adrenaline, part of me hoped that they would just get on with the story.
In the film, you can see the difference between the more cautious Becky versus the more colourfully energetic Hunter, and you might wonder why they were ever best friends in the first place, because what kind of a friend would force an obviously traumatised friend to do something so dangerous she’s clearly not in the proper mental state for?
Even so, I suppose good survivalist thrillers are about supposedly smart people making utterly stupid choices and the tragedy of looking back at how easily your plight could have been avoided.
One thing to comment though is that the Malay subtitles were sort of inaccurate and low-key funny.
Despite the cliched melodrama and predictable plot, I was on the edge of my seat for the entire movie. I really liked how director Scott Mann filmed the cinematic sequence with the two girls atop the tower with severe angles and dizzying depth-of-field to depict how high these women are above the ground.
The film was redeemed by its outright viciousness and certainly kept its audience focused and praying for the entire film.
If you think you’re up for the challenge, just a word of warning – watching this movie will leave you a quivering wreck. I would know, because my palms were cold and sweaty for the entire film.
Fall is out in theatres today.
Director: Scott Mann
Cast: Grace Caroline Currey, Virginia Gardner, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
E-VALUE: 7
ACTING: 7
PLOT: 8
