When I first saw the previews to this at a theater the climbing and hanging on the edge had me freaked out. Once I actually watched it, not so much. I found it to be a bit boring, not well acted, and the drama and dialog were on the weak side.
To be honest, I felt like it was a rip off of The Decent. You have a woman who loses her husband in the very beginning of the film and goes on a year long nose dive into depression. Her friend tries to snap her out of it by taking her climbing, only to find out half way through that her friend and husband were having an affair and fell in love.
The Decent was so much better of a film, had excellent acting, realistic dialog, and the way the affair is revealed and played out after was gripping. Fall fell short of this in all aspects.
So, we have 2 young women, the friend is for sure on the hyper immature side. She has not spoken to the main character for almost a year since the husband's death. She pops back in her life suddenly with a "hey, let's do a super dangerous climb on an abandoned tower with very little gear and no plan B so you can spread your husband's ashes". Okie dokie.
The friend is also filming this for her social media followers, so of course she says she has to wear a bare minimum top to show her cleavage for "likes". So she's vapid and dim. Got it. We have some odd scene of a baby donkey being eaten while still alive by vultures. The friend thinks it's funny to take pictures of the dying baby to post. So we've now established she is a pretty horrible person and we are hoping she falls.
They start the climb, the friend knows the main protagonist is scared and out of her element but does stupid things like shaking the ladder to scare her. Who does that?? Of course, with the old rusty ladder, screws start popping off and neither of them have a clue. They only have one backpack between the two of them with barely any safety supplies. Only a short thin rope, no gloves, no extra clothes, only one small bottle of water, and zero food like granola or nuts...zippo, nada. I'm not a climber or at all a daredevil and I would think that you'd have the basic safety supplies and both of you should have your own backpack with said supplies. These girls were scaling mountains before this, the ones husband died in a fall, safety should be top priority.
Anyway, they get to the top to hang out on a super tiny platform with no barrier. They both do idiot things like hang one handed from the ledge and hold the others hand while the other dangles. No way would they have been able to hold each others body weight. Not to mention the main girl had a year of alcoholism and depression and would have been completely out of shape. But here they were, dangling with no equipment 2000 feet in the air with high winds, all for social media likes.
Ok, so as we the viewers can already see coming a mile away, the ladder breaks. And it doesn't break part way, the whole thing falls to the ground. How do they react? They laugh hysterically and are like, well gee whiz, how do we get down now? There was very little tension in their demeanor, so why would I as the viewer be concerned either?
The rest of the film is spent with them doing more stupid stuff to try and get help. Then we have the drama of finding out about the affair. It was delivered poorly and doesn't really make you feel for either character, other than making the friend look like a worse human than she already appeared.
At the end the main character was hallucinating her friend still being alive, when she had actually fallen and died a day or two before. This was the best part of the film. I was hoping at this point the main girl would do an 'Open Water' ending and realize that her loneliness and will to survive was futile and she would swan dive off the ledge. No such luck. She still had enough strength to kill a vulture and eat it raw so she could repel down to her friends body, stuff her phone in her friends stomach and push her off the tower so that she could get a phone signal. Oh lawrty.
She's rescued and we get some dialog, which her friend had said earlier in the film, about life being too short to not do what you love. Um, her husband is dead, her friend is dead, and now she has a lifetime of PTSD. Their lives were certainly short and ended violently. But hey, do what you love with little regard cause tomorrow you might fall from a tower. Cheers!
To be honest, I felt like it was a rip off of The Decent. You have a woman who loses her husband in the very beginning of the film and goes on a year long nose dive into depression. Her friend tries to snap her out of it by taking her climbing, only to find out half way through that her friend and husband were having an affair and fell in love.
The Decent was so much better of a film, had excellent acting, realistic dialog, and the way the affair is revealed and played out after was gripping. Fall fell short of this in all aspects.
So, we have 2 young women, the friend is for sure on the hyper immature side. She has not spoken to the main character for almost a year since the husband's death. She pops back in her life suddenly with a "hey, let's do a super dangerous climb on an abandoned tower with very little gear and no plan B so you can spread your husband's ashes". Okie dokie.
The friend is also filming this for her social media followers, so of course she says she has to wear a bare minimum top to show her cleavage for "likes". So she's vapid and dim. Got it. We have some odd scene of a baby donkey being eaten while still alive by vultures. The friend thinks it's funny to take pictures of the dying baby to post. So we've now established she is a pretty horrible person and we are hoping she falls.
They start the climb, the friend knows the main protagonist is scared and out of her element but does stupid things like shaking the ladder to scare her. Who does that?? Of course, with the old rusty ladder, screws start popping off and neither of them have a clue. They only have one backpack between the two of them with barely any safety supplies. Only a short thin rope, no gloves, no extra clothes, only one small bottle of water, and zero food like granola or nuts...zippo, nada. I'm not a climber or at all a daredevil and I would think that you'd have the basic safety supplies and both of you should have your own backpack with said supplies. These girls were scaling mountains before this, the ones husband died in a fall, safety should be top priority.
Anyway, they get to the top to hang out on a super tiny platform with no barrier. They both do idiot things like hang one handed from the ledge and hold the others hand while the other dangles. No way would they have been able to hold each others body weight. Not to mention the main girl had a year of alcoholism and depression and would have been completely out of shape. But here they were, dangling with no equipment 2000 feet in the air with high winds, all for social media likes.
Ok, so as we the viewers can already see coming a mile away, the ladder breaks. And it doesn't break part way, the whole thing falls to the ground. How do they react? They laugh hysterically and are like, well gee whiz, how do we get down now? There was very little tension in their demeanor, so why would I as the viewer be concerned either?
The rest of the film is spent with them doing more stupid stuff to try and get help. Then we have the drama of finding out about the affair. It was delivered poorly and doesn't really make you feel for either character, other than making the friend look like a worse human than she already appeared.
At the end the main character was hallucinating her friend still being alive, when she had actually fallen and died a day or two before. This was the best part of the film. I was hoping at this point the main girl would do an 'Open Water' ending and realize that her loneliness and will to survive was futile and she would swan dive off the ledge. No such luck. She still had enough strength to kill a vulture and eat it raw so she could repel down to her friends body, stuff her phone in her friends stomach and push her off the tower so that she could get a phone signal. Oh lawrty.
She's rescued and we get some dialog, which her friend had said earlier in the film, about life being too short to not do what you love. Um, her husband is dead, her friend is dead, and now she has a lifetime of PTSD. Their lives were certainly short and ended violently. But hey, do what you love with little regard cause tomorrow you might fall from a tower. Cheers!