Fall

Fall (2022)

72% on Rotten Tomatoes (albeit out of 86 reviews)

Runtime: 107 minutes

Directed by: Scott Mann

Starring: Grace Caroline Currey, Virginia Gardner, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Mason Gooding

From: This was released by Lionsgate-more on that later-but many companies made this, including... BuzzFeed News?!

Boy, did this drop the ball. Randomly, I decided to see this last night at an AMC Theatres; I might as well use their A-List app more often and this did not make much money at the box office. I never saw any advertising for Bodies Bodies Bodies yet at least I saw one teaser trailer for this earlier in the summer.
 

BBB, BTW, gives me great pause due to it coming from A24 and plus, NOT having to look at Pete Davidson-admittedly my appearance is rather poor when compared to Jason Momoa but Davidson always looks as if he's a corpse who's been floating in a river for a few days!-is usually the right choice. It was originally rated R before Lionsgate bought the rights to the film and they wanted it PG-13 (I thought the days of Lionsgate being dumb asshats was over-I was mistaken) so AI technology was needed to remove all but one F-bomb. That detail wasn't known until afterwards yet while at the cinema the usage of "frickin'" was rather blatant along with quite a few S-bombs. Examining the lack of box office success, It might as well have been rated R that's what I'm saying... and I am someone who thinks the F-bomb is used too often in society, let alone in motion pictures.

As many might not have a clue as to what the plot is: the opening scene is a trio rock climbing, and one was doing the free solo thing as if they were Alex Honnold. Tragedy happens and one person doesn't take it well. Finally, the other tries to help them out and attempt to make them move in rather than wallow in misery-a worthy idea-by... illegally climbing a 2,000 foot (609.6 meters) TV tower that's to be torn down soon?! Well, that other person is a social media sensation due to their death-defying risk-taking so why not? Hopefully the audience was to laugh at how foolish they were. Incidentally, in the United States there actually are some TV towers that are 2,000 feet or a little higher; those are located all over but two are in North Dakota. The setting of this movie is somewhere in the American Southwest as to be honest, that provides more interesting scenery than North Dakota, no offense. Then again, all TV/radio towers that high have many guide wires that hold them in place and this tower had exactly zero of those...

That aside, this is a movie I gave every chance to. The concept was rather unique, the extreme height/isolation was presented well and there definitely were some scenes full of suspense/tension. Unfortunately, I disagreed with some decisions made concerning the plot. A few moments were groaners-after all, they illegally climbed a tower about to be torn down and told no one beforehand their location-& it's regrettable they felt those moments were necessary for the story. But there was one key decision the filmmakers made which I totally rejected and no way could the movie recover from that... even if it resulted in an LOL WTF detail. A few obvious plot holes were one thing but a particular story beat I really didn't care for.

What a shame, as otherwise I would have rated this higher. For certain, none of the blame for the film's faults goes to the two leads, Grace Caroline Currey & Virginia Gardner. As expected, much of the movie is only those two actresses & they both tried their hardest to make this believable; multiple emotions were presented by them rather well. If only there wouldn't have been so many dopey/implausible moments... that ruins the main plot point which is a woman dealing with then confronting her grief after a horrible tragedy. Before anyone asks, Jeffrey Dean Morgan was swell in his role-it's just a small one.

One last thing: as previously mentioned, Lionsgate was the one who released the film but many other companies actually made it; imagine my shock when one of them was... BuzzFeed! Yes, now they apparently make movies. Personally, BuzzFeed is a lowest common denominator website-I realize that will be an unpopular opinion. Yet it is one I'll stick with; I just saw that they're trying to manufacture a feud between Florence Pugh and Olivia Wilde based off of... social media points. It's incredibly lame as the “points” made were extremely weak.