Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.0

Fall 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 20, 2023

Just last week in my Joy Ride Blu-ray review I mentioned the sometimes perplexing release and/or promotion strategies (?) employed by Lionsgate to offer their productions to the wider movie and home theater loving audiences, and in that regard I specifically mentioned their sometimes baffling choices for exclusive SteelBook offerings. As if responding with a hearty "hold my beer", Lionsgate is back this week with a rather nicely designed SteelBook release of Fall, which as of the writing of this review is a Best Buy exclusive. This release offers an upgraded Dolby Atmos track as well as perhaps surprisingly one new supplement. Parts of my original Fall Blu-ray review are reprinted here, as appropriate.

Fall might be what could jokingly be considered a really "high concept" film, in that it revolves rather incredibly around two young women who find themselves stranded atop an abandoned radio tower with, to quote a great old Carole King tune, no easy way down. This Blu-ray release's cover art is downright misleading in a way, since it kinda sorta depicts a vignette in the film which sees one of the focal characters actually deliberately hanging off of the platform at the top of the tower for a selfie with her friend, but at least that brief sequence helps to establish the fact that Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) and BFF Hunter (Virginia Gardner) are both brave and foolhardy, probably in equal measure. The film has already documented that both women are expert climbers in a pre-credits scene that plays like an outtake from Cliffhanger, albeit (and minor spoiler alert) without much of the "hanging" part, which results in the death of Becky's husband. And in fact it's a desire to get over the trauma of that horrifying death that finally gets Becky to agree to the climb with Hunter. In the meantime, more family dysfunction has been shoehorned into the proceedings courtesy of a subplot involving Becky and her estranged father James (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), seemingly for no other reason than the fact that a "two hander" centered on survival is probably going to need some "outside" party to arrive late in the story as a veritable Deus ex Machina.

Fall is both almost ridiculously predictable and unabashedly adrenaline pumping, with co-writer and director Scott Mann managing to find a weird kind of balance where the first aspect never totally overwhelms the second. The whole setup for the film is so patently absurd that it almost seems, well, insurmountable, and so a certain amount of respect needs to be afforded Mann and his team for generating a fair amount of angst as Becky and Hunter become increasingly desperate high atop a rusting tower of metal. But the very fact that the film relies almost entirely on the interplay between these two characters becomes increasingly precarious as the story "develops" (which may be an overstatement, all things considered). That's probably nowhere more evident than in a late reveal about Hunter that seems to confirm earlier misgivings James had about Becky's late husband.

There's also a bit of artifice involved in the third act which is in some ways realistic, but that side of things is probably counterweighted by potentially laugh out loud (if also admittedly horrifying) scenes involving Becky and marauding vultures, who sense their own version of a Happy Meal may be about to be ready. What's also maybe just a bit comical about the subtext of this piece is that Becky supposedly goes on this climb to overcome the trauma of her last climb, which kind of then begs the question as to what she's going to do next. And that makes this film's sudden wind up with its own version of a "happy" (?) ending seem tonally ill at odds with much of what has gone before.

The film still offers some decided suspense, and for anyone who, like I did, spent much of Cliffhanger reminding themselves to breathe deeply and maybe not permanently indent the arms of the chair due to digging one's hands into them so strongly, Fall has some viscerally unsettling vertiginous material. A relatively brief making of featurette gets into some of the nuts and bolts of the perhaps surprisingly practical solutions that Mann and his team came up with to give the illusion that the two girls are stranded a couple of thousand feet up in the air.

Both Currey and Gardner give committed performances, but they're not always helped by some frankly clunky writing that ultimately gives sway to too much hyped up interpersonal drama. The making of featurette also gets into some of the training regimens the women had to undergo to handle the physical challenges of the shoot, and the climbing scenes come off as genuinely frightening.

Note: My colleague Brian Orndorf was arguably even less enthused with Fall than I am. You can read Brian's thoughts here.

Fall 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Note: Screenshots are sourced from the 1080 disc included in this package.

Fall is presented in 4K UHD courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an HEVC / H.265 encoded 2160p transfer in 2.00:1. I really wish some wise insider in the film industry would keep an up to date database of the resolutions of DIs, since it would make my job manifestly easier, especially when the IMDb continues to be mute about releases like this one. When Fall came out on 1080 disc a couple of years ago, I defaulted to assuming it had a 2K DI, but now seeing the noticeable uptick in fine detail in particular in this new 4K UHD version, I'm frankly thinking it probably had a 4K DI, or results from a new workflow subsequent to the 1080 disc. (As always with my reviews, I'd welcome any authoritative information which can be passed on, and I'll happily update things here.) The first thing I noticed aside from the improved detail levels was the amelioration if not complete removal of some of the banding I mentioned in my 1080 review (which was so severe I was actually able to get a screencapture of it, which is pretty unusual in my experience). The daytime sequences in this version pop rather beautifully a lot of the time, but kind of interestingly HDR can both cool and warm things at various points, and the opening sequence looks a bit cooler to me in that regard than the 1080 version, while a lot of the later sun drenched material on the antenna can at least at times have a somewhat warmer appearance. There's still a slightly noisy look to some of the low light scenes. The already impressive depth of field in the 1080 version is only improved here.

Note: I see a member has offered that the 4K disc features an "unrated cut", with the "theatrical cut" on the 1080 disc, but there are only three seconds' variance between the two (1:47:23 for the 4K, 1:47:20 for the 1080) and while I may have missed some passing expletive or something similar, I didn't notice any differences between the two.

Fall 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Fall features a nicely rendered Dolby Atmos track that takes the often surprisingly subtle surround activity that the 1080 version's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track offers and then literally and figuratively elevates it. As with the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, the Atmos track tends to offer the most clear immersion in terms of the almost nonstop ambient environmental sounds that swirl around the girls. What's really well done on this track to my ears is the surprisingly subtle use of environmental sounds, so that when sudden bursts of sonic activity accrue, as in the vulture sequences, it's actually quite startling. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English and Spanish subtitles are available.

Fall 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Creating the Impact of Fall (HD; 18:23) is a fun retrospective with some of the creatives discussing how the film seems to already have a cult following and legacy. This is new to this release. The rest of the supplements were on the original 1080 release and are offered on the 1080 disc in this package.


• Commentary with Producer / Co-writer / Director Scott Mann and Producer James Harris


• Madison Beer I Have Never Felt So Alive from the feature film Fall (HD; 3:25) is a music video.


• Fall: The Making Of (HD; 15:42) has some interesting footage showing how the tower scenes were filmed.


• Theatrical Trailer (HD; 2:28)

Additionally, a digital copy is included. The SteelBook packaging is fun, with a mylar O-Ring that offers the girls on the tower in daytime, which transforms to night on the cover itself. The inside panels offer the chilling key art of one of the girls dangling off the tower, though it's presented sideways across the two inner panels, since the image is "tall".

Fall 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Fall was evidently originally conceived as a short, and it's at least arguable that this very high concept would have benefited from a much shorter running time. You can almost feel Mann and his team padding this effort with basically needless sidebars to get the thing to a decent running time, and the result is ultimately kind of frustrating, despite some admittedly relatively effective moments of terror. There is such an underlying feeling of incredulity about this enterprise, though, that may undercut any attempt to extract honest human emotion is doomed to failure. I found both the video and audio technical presentations on this 4K UHD version to be superior to the 1080 disc, and the addition of a new supplement as well as some frankly kind of cool SteelBook design flair may add to the allure for those considering making a purchase.