Fear reaches new heights.
Fall is a 2022 Survival-Thriller film, written and directed by Scott Mann, and starring Grace Caroline Currey (credited as Grace Fulton for the last time), Virginia Gardner, Mason Gooding, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.Best friends Hunter (Gardner) and Becky (Currey) are in the process of recovering from an emotionally devastating accident the previous year, wherein Becky's husband Dan was killed while mountain climbing with the two of them. As a way of bonding over their shared trauma and moving on, Hunter suggests they climb a decommissioned B67 TV tower out in the California desert. The climb proceeds without incident until they make it to the top, at which point the rusted ladder collapses and falls off the side of the tower, leaving the two women trapped on a narrow platform high above the earth.
The film is a co-production between several UK and US production companies and was distributed and released by Lionsgate on August 12th, 2022.
Not to be confused with the 1997 Romantic Comedy of the same name, the 2006 fantasy film The Fall, or the British/Irish serial killer series The Fall (2013).
Tropes in this film include:
- Arc Words:
- "Survival of the fittest."
- "1,4,3."
- Arduous Descent to Terra Firma: Two friends climb a decommissioned TV tower for the thrill of it. They get stuck there when the ladder collapses and have to survive until someone comes to help.
- Artistic License – Biology: Becky has to kill and eat a vulture raw for sustenance. Suffice to say, doing this in Real Life would very likely cause you to become seriously ill and/or die. Being scavengers, vultures have evolved such that their bodies can tolerate ingesting millions upon millions of micro-organisms which would be fatal to most other species, including humans.
- The Alcoholic: Becky becomes one after Dan's death.
- Bad Influencer: Hunter has become an influencer to make a living by doing extreme stunts on social media for her fans, and it is later revealed that she had an affair with Dan before his marriage to Becky and it was her idea to climb the tower in the first place, leading to the events of the film. It's subverted as she clearly regrets both of those things, as she tearfully admits to Becky and doesn't blame her if she hates her.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- After Becky breaks down upon realizing Hunter is dead and that she was just hallucinating in denial of being alone up on the tower, she records a tearful parting video for her father and the next scene focuses on a vulture swooping down on her still body. It turns out she was feigning death to lure said vulture, kill it and eat its flesh for sustenance.
- James reaches the tower site just in time to see the authorities covering a dead body and he breaks down, assuming it to be Becky's. Becky then calls out and runs over to him from a nearby ambulance; the body is Hunter's.
- Betty and Veronica: Dan was the Archie to Becky's Betty and Hunter's Veronica. Becky won, then Dan and Hunter both died.
- Bittersweet Ending: Hunter is dead, but Becky is rescued and reconciles with her father.
- Bottle Episode: There are only four main actors (one of which dies early on) and most of the film takes place on the tower.
- Bowdlerise: The film was edited before its release to receive a PG-13 rating from the MPA; all but one of the uses of "fuck" were redubbed and the mouth movements were digitally altered. This censored version was released in theaters, even in countries like Canada and the UK where the movie's language doesn't make a difference for its rating. So far, the uncensored version has only been released on the UK Blu-Ray.
- Can't You Read the Sign?: Hunter is forced to park the car about a couple of miles away from the tower due to a locked gate complete with a "No Trespassing" sign. The gate is low enough for them to climb over though.
- Catapult Nightmare: Becky has a couple of these:
- She wakes up in bed with Dan gently caressing her from behind, and when she tries to get him to say "I love you," he responds with '1,4,3' before his corpse gushes blood all over her bed.
- She falls asleep on the tower and wakes up again at night, with Hunter nowhere to be found. She then sees Hunter's bloodied corpse being devoured by a vulture. This turns out to be Real After All, however.
- Chekhov's Skill: Early in the film, Hunter helps Becky charge her phone by plugging her charger in a lamp at a diner when there are no outlets. Becky later uses the light at the top of the tower as an outlet to charge the drone, hanging on for hours before it is fully charged.
- Circling Vultures: The tower is located in a desert where vultures circle, and they're even seen feeding on live prey that has become too weak. Vultures harass Becky after she gets a festering leg wound from a mishap, and very nearly make her fall off the top of the tower while charging the drone. Becky eventually turns the tables with a Wounded Gazelle Gambit to lure a vulture to eat from her before she can kill and eat it herself.
- Cliffhanger: Becky has just managed to push Hunter's corpse with her phone inside off of the antenna in a last-ditch attempt to place an emergency call when the antenna starts to break off from the tower and she struggles to hang on. The scene then cuts to black before switching to James' perspective as he approaches the tower with the authorities already there.
- Dating What Daddy Hates: The reason for Becky's estranged relationship with her father James is because he thinks that Dan wasn't such the great guy that Becky made him out to be for her to be getting overly drunk and depressed over for so long. He is later proven right when Hunter confesses that he had an affair with her that ended before he married Becky.
- Dead All Along: Everything that happened after Becky supposedly pulled Hunter up was a delusion Becky visualized due to her dehydration, hunger, and guilt, as Hunter fell and hit the antenna below and bled out.
- Dies Wide Open: When Hunter's corpse is finally shown, her eyes are open.
- Fanservice: Hunter spends the majority of the movie wearing a low-cut tank top and push-up bra providing ample footage that draws attention to her cleavage (almost enough for a Drinking Game). Justified and Discussed, as she is a social media influencer and, in her own words, "tits for clicks". Once she's exposed to the elements and dehydrated it quickly swerves into Fan Disservice. Especially when we see her cadaver. There are several scenes which show ample views of Becky's cleavage as well.
- Foreshadowing:
- As the girls climb up the tower, one of the inner ladder rungs breaks off and a bolt dislodges and falls from the outer ladder due to neglect and disrepair. Sure enough, the outer ladder collapses as Becky begins to climb down, leaving her and Hunter trapped on the platform.
- There are quite a few clues that Hunter is dead prior to the big reveal, such as:
- Upon initially reaching the top of the tower, Hunter hangs off the platform ledge for a selfie. When she falls, she was really asking for it.
- Hunter's fall from the tower results in the sound of metal clanging. Do you think she really landed on the bag?
- After falling from the tower, Hunter says "I don't think I can climb". Indeed, this is because she's dead.
- When Becky is "pulling" Hunter up, the line going off the platform is much slacker than it was when Hunter was on it. Indeed, this is because she's not on it.
- And we are supposed to believe a "scrawny ass" girl like Becky can pull Hunter's weight up, including holding on to the rope with one hand while she collects the slack with each heave?
- After Becky "pulls" Hunter back up, Hunter doesn't interact with any other objects again: she doesn't touch the water or the bag, lets Becky control the drone, and Becky's the one to make the climb to the top to charge the drone's battery. The clearest example is when Becky drops the backpack after being attacked by the vulture, and Hunter simply watches it plummet to the ground instead of trying to catch it (which Becky even calls her out on). Hunter's supposed hand injuries rationalize this.
- Speaking of the vulture, it never tries to attack Hunter, only going for Becky instead. Becky rationalizes this as it is drawn to the smell of her infected leg wound, which is correct, but it's also because she's the only one up there.
- Becky begins to show clear signs of dehydration, exposure and sleep deprivation, struggling to keep from passing out towards the end, while Hunter seems surprisingly lucid and unaffected by these same conditions.
- When Hunter is trying to keep Becky from passing out, she asks her to list her favorite wrestlers from WWE, a sport Hunter knows nothing about. When Becky struggles to remember the name of Mick Foley's most famous character, Mankind, Hunter immediately provides the answer.
- When the drone is hit by the truck and the driver leaves without seeing it on the ground, the camera focuses on Becky's Heroic BSoD, but doesn't show us Hunter's reaction at all. When the camera pans out from the tower afterwards, Hunter is briefly shown to be sitting calmly, seemingly unaffected.
- Even her personality shifts, going from being risk-taking and gung ho to more cautious and careful - in other words, more like Becky herself.
- After the backpack retrieval, Becky has a nightmare of waking up alone on the tower with vultures harassing her before seeing Hunter dead on the signal dish below them. When the reality of the situation is revealed, it seems very likely this "nightmare" was actually a moment of waking lucidity.
- From Bad to Worse: The ladder collapsing and trapping the two women is bad enough, but then the desert heat begins to take its toll as they quickly run low on water, and then a couple of rednecks steal Hunter's car (removing nearly all evidence that they were there), and then some angry and aggressive vultures show up.
- Godzilla Threshold: As time goes on, Becky has to take more drastic action to survive; she feigns death to lure in a vulture so that she can kill and eat it, and then drops down to the communication dish where Hunter's body is so that she can put her phone inside her friend's corpse, hoping that this will cushion the phone enough that it will survive the impact on the ground and send a message for help.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Becky pushes Hunter's body off the antenna with her phone inside it in the hopes that it provides enough padding to protect it to send out a call for help. Given that the antenna was nearly 2000 feet above the ground, it's probably for the best that the result of the impact was already covered with a sheet by the time James arrives at the scene.
- Heel Realization: When Hunter reveals that she had an affair with Dan behind Becky's back, she ended it after Dan and Becky got married because she realized their friendship wasn't worth losing over it.
- Heroic BSoD: Becky presumably goes through one after Dan's death which leads her to become a depressed alcoholic, and goes through another one where she breaks down upon realizing Hunter died after falling onto the antenna and that she was just hallucinating her company.
- Hope Spot: Two major moments:
- Becky and Hunter manage to get the attention of two men in a trailer. They end up stealing Hunter's car.
- Becky manages to charge the drone with their note inside it and get it close to the motel only for a truck to hit it and destroy it.
- Ironic Last Words: After Hunter admits to having an affair with Dan before he married Becky, she makes a tongue-in-cheek remark to Becky that maybe she'll get lucky and she'll fall to her death before she attempts to climb down and retrieve her backpack. Which is exactly what happens afterwards when she loses her grip, falls and bleeds out on the antenna.
- It's All My Fault: Hunter tearfully admits this to Becky when they're trapped on top of the tower since it was her idea to climb it in the first place and that she had an affair with Dan before he married Becky.
- Jealous Romantic Witness: When Becky watches a video taken during her wedding ceremony with Dan, she notices Hunter scowling at them in the background.
- Jerkass: The rednecks who see Becky and Hunter stranded on top of the tower decide to steal their car instead of getting help.
- Karma Houdini: The two rednecks who steal the Hunter's car and leave the women to die are never seen punished for their heartless actions.
- Lack of Empathy: Hunter has a couple of moments:
- When she records a video log while driving to the tower, she narrowly avoids driving into the path of an oncoming truck. Becky has an appropriate Oh, Crap! reaction while Hunter laughs it off, not even stopping the recording.
- On their walk towards the tower, Becky and Hunter come across a barely-alive goat being eaten by some vultures and shooing them away. While Becky is visibly shaken and disgusted by the sight of the now-dead goat, Hunter simply takes a photo of it to upload on social media, even adding a "feeling peckish" caption.
- Last-Name Basis: Subverted in the sense that Hunter is also a common first name which can be assumed to be her actual first name, but in a Blink-and-You-Miss-It moment when Becky is filming a video with her she reveals Hunter's first name to be Shiloh.
- Losing a Shoe in the Struggle: Hunter takes off her left shoe and sock and uses them to store the phone inside so it can be hopefully dropped to the ground without shattering, leaving Hunter with one bare foot for the rest of the film. Becky also takes off both of her shoes (she didn't wear socks, and thus is barefoot completely) to throw them to the ground to get a man's attention. At the end, Becky uses Hunter's other shoe to once again store a cell phone, this time storing the shoe inside Hunter's corpse.
- No Antagonist: The closest the film gets to a main villain is that of the vultures, which are just animals following their instincts, and the thieves who are just taking advantage of the situation.
- No One Could Survive That!: Invoked during the mission to retrieve the backpack down on the signal dish. When Hunter is being pulled back up, the rope slips and she falls, and Becky sits back in horror and shock, certain Hunter died, before very slowly and reluctantly peering over the edge to see her hanging on the backpack, alive and unshaken, but with injured hands. Turns out, Becky was right the first time—no one really could survive that, and everything of Hunter after Becky peered over the edge of the platform was Becky brute-forcing her perceptions to hallucinate that Hunter had lived, which lasts until she has to confront the fact that her escape plan requires going down to the dish where she fell and died.
- Once More, with Clarity: When it's revealed that Hunter died while retrieving her bag, there is a flashback to the scene where she supposedly managed to hold on to the rope and Becky pulled her up, instead showing Hunter falling and bleeding out on the antenna and Becky pulling just the bag up.
- One-Word Title: Fall.
- Primal Fear: Fear of heights, specifically. The reason why is right there in the title.
- Reduced to Ratburgers: Becky lures in a vulture and eats it raw to regain her strength after days without food.
- Shout-Out: In the opening scene, Dan calls Hunter "Ethan Hunt" while they're rock climbing.
- Something Only They Would Say: Becky notices a tattoo of the numbers 1,4 and 3 on Hunter's foot and recalls that was Dan's way of saying "I love you." She puts two and two together and realizes Hunter was having an affair with him (albeit she broke it off after he and Becky got married).
- Spoiler Title: If the story is about safely getting down from a radio tower, then why is the title "Fall"? Hmm...
- Stage Names: Hunter is an influencer who goes by the name "Danger D." Becky prefers her as Hunter.
- Staring Down Cthulhu: Becky is able to scare off the vulture making a meal out of Hunter's corpse just by giving it one nasty Death Glare. Her being covered in its pack mate's blood probably helped.
- Thrill Seeker: Not that she wasn't one before Dan's death, but Hunter reveals she has been making a living by being a daredevil who does extreme and death-defying stunts for social media. It's most notable when she hangs off the platform ledge and poses once she and Becky reach the top of the tower.
- Too Dumb to Live: Hunter insists on climbing to the top of the tower when its ladder starts to break down, hangs off the platform ledge for a selfie, and detaches herself from the rope. No wonder she fell to her death.
- Two-Timing with the Bestie: Becky's late husband Dan and her best friend Hunter had an affair which ended after Becky's marriage to the former.
- Unrated Edition: The UK Blu-Ray contains the "theatrical release" and the "uncut version." The theatrical release redubs most of the F-bombs and digitally alters the mouth movements. The uncut version is actually two seconds shorter than the theatrical release (theatrical is 1:46:52, uncut is 1:46:50).
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: James calls Hunter for help to get Becky out of her depressive funk, triggering the plot into motion.
- Wham Line: "Hunter" delivers this line revealing that she's a hallucination by Becky:Yes, but... I'm... down there, remember?
- Wham Shot: The shot where Hunter turns her head to reveal that her face has blood on it, which also reveals that she's not actually up there with Becky.
