film reel image

film reel image

Monday, August 22, 2022

Fall 2022 * * * 1/2 Stars

TAKE THIS PLUNGE

2022's Fall is a three-dimensional, panoramic jaw-dropper. Watching it, you want to leave the theater or just close your eyes but you can't. Like a car accident, Fall makes you unable to look away from the acrophobic havoc that's forced upon you. A panic attack in full I had. 

Fall clocks in at 107 minutes and those ends justify the means. It's just right. Director Scott Mann ups the ante here, creating new tale of survival circumstances where your fingernails are pretty much gnawed to the nub. I mean Mann had to build some hurdles to facilitate Fall's average running time. Otherwise it would be just two girls trapped on top of a radio tower, waiting to bite it. 

So is the dialogue in Fall a little cheesy (especially in the early goings)? Yep. It's sort of Lifetime-like with the addition of Snapchats and Instagram-s and what not (ugh). Is the editing in Fall a tad choppy? Yes but it doesn't matter. You'll feel way too twitchy to give a rat's butt. Finally, do Fall's characters nonchalantly act in peril when stuff really gets real? Early on yeah. Heck, I could've done without a rendition of Warrant's "Cherry Pie" in the stylings of acapella.

Fall stars Grace Caroline Currey as Becky and Virginia Gardner as Hunter. After the death of Becky's husband, her and Hunter decided to climb a 2000 foot, TV satellite structure in the middle of nowhere (it sure looked like Arizona to me). Because said structure is old and crusty, parts of it break off and Becks and Hunter are confined to the top with pretty much no chance of getting down. 

So OK, we've seen movies like Fall before. You know with sharks and water and SUVs and hotel rooms. It's about the isolation, the captivity, the limited resources, the adrenaline-packed will to live on. With Fall, the proceedings however have never been this potent, this heady. The visuals? Well they're just an added plus. Yeah it's CGI but whatev, it's the good kind. Helmer Scott Mann provides Fall with a sense of vertigo (duh), a sense of the axonometric, and a dusty palate that's widescreen heaven. If you have a fear of heights (and I do), then Fall will just perpetuate that fear and do it in spades. "Ride for a fall". 

Written by Jesse Burleson

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