Don't look down, don't let go and don't forget to breathe.
"Fall" is a fun, rollicking B-movie white knuckler that makes superb use of its simple premise: two climbers are stuck on top of massive structure with no way to get down. Co-writer and director Scott Mann milks that minimalist setup for nearly two hours of death-defying thrills, and keeps finding new ways to engage the audience with his dizzying, vertigo-inducing high-wire (or high-platform) act.
Twenty-something best friends Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) and Hunter (Virginia Gardner) are a pair of adventure seekers who decide to climb the B67 TV tower, a 2,000 foot structure in the California desert that stands twice as tall as the Eiffel Tower.
Hunter, who looks like the second coming of Reese Witherspoon, is a YouTuber described by her friend as "natural born clickbait" who is sure to maximize her cleavage for optimum click potential, while Hunter has been spiraling since the death of her husband (Mason Gooding) during a mountain climbing accident nearly a year ago.
What better way to get back on the horse than by climbing a rusty old structure in the middle of nowhere?
Becky has her reservations but Hunter goads her into joining her as they scale the fourth highest structure in the U.S., which eclipses One World Trade Center in New York by more than 200 feet. And besides those rickety ladders and the lack of anyone around for miles, what could possibly go wrong?
Well, plenty does, and soon the pair finds themselves trapped on a tiny platform close to a half-mile in the air when the ladder below them collapses to the ground. They're too high up to get cell reception, their ropes won't get them to safety and their drone doesn't have enough charge left in it to deliver a message to people below. And those vultures circling the tower are starting to get hungry.
There's not a lot for two people to do on top of a tower on a platform the size of a pizza, but Mann, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jonathan Frank, creates enough different scenarios in this lean, pared-down adventure that its energy never lags.
It's far from air-tight, and a thread about a romantic betrayal is poorly telegraphed and is pure soap opera fluff. But "Fall" isn't above such fluff and is never in danger of taking itself too seriously: without wink-winking directly at the camera, Mann and his actresses — it's mostly just them, sharing the screen with cinematographer MacGregor's often breathtaking aerial photography — find the right balance of silly and stirring. It's a popcorn movie through and through.
Like Stallone's "Cliffhanger" (or even 2018's Oscar-winning doc "Free Solo"), "Fall" makes for a gripping fear-of-heights thrill ride with an enticing what-would-you-do backbone. It wouldn't take much for "Fall" to come crashing down to Earth, but once it makes its ascent it never loses its footing.
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'FALL'
Grade: B
MPAA rating: PG-13 (for bloody images, intense peril, and strong language)
Running time: 1:47
How to watch: In theaters Friday
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