Fall Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.0

Fall Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 7, 2022

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 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Fall is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.00:1. This is another recent release from Lionsgate which features a perfectly competent digital capture that I'm assuming had a 2K DI, but which is at least occasionally hobbled by some persistent banding which is so noticeable that I was even able to get a screencapture of it, which is not always possible (see screencapture 19). Aside from that intermittently distracting situation, the rest of this transfer is typically quite good, at least in the more brightly lit moments, which are the bulk of the film. The palette pops agreeably throughout and detail levels are generally excellent, especially since so many framings feature extreme close-ups of the girls high atop the tower. Depth of field is also often very impressive. Some of the lower light scenes don't fare as well and have a somewhat noisy appearance. Occasional ostensible "cell phone video" is intentionally distressed (see screenshot 2).

Fall Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Fall features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that offer clear if kind of subtle surround activity, almost all of which is comprised of a glut of ambient environmental sounds wafting around the two stranded women. Some early establishing material offers perhaps a bit more variety in terms of what populates the side and rear channels, as in an early scene of Becky in a bar or a later moment with Becky and Hunter at a diner, but much of the effects work here is devoted to establishing the reality of the two women surrounded by not much other than gusts of wind and the occasional vulture. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English and Spanish subtitles are available.

Fall Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• 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 and packaging features a slipcover.

Fall 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. Technical merits are generally decent, though Lionsgate seems to be back into banding on the run, if I may be permitted to pun horribly, for anyone who may be considering making a purchase.