[Review]—"FALL" is a Tense, Nail-Biting Rush

I used to have acrophobia, or a fear of heights, so a movie like Fall would have terrified me. Now hold on, I still live in constant terror of dying from falls, especially from a 2,000-foot TV tower. What TV tower, you ask? Well, I'm talking about two thrill-seekers who try to scale the B67 TV tower amid the desert, but absolutely everything goes wrong!

In the film, Becky Madison, played by Grace Caroline Currey (Annabelle: Creation; Shazam!), is an adrenaline junkie seeking to move on following the loss of her husband, Dan (Mason Gooding). After Grace's estranged father (Jeffery Dean Morgan) is unable to lift her out of her melancholy, Grace's closest friend and thrill fanatic Shiloh Hunter (Virginia Gardner) takes her out of her sorrow for a road trip—by climbing a decommissioned 2,000-foot B67 TV tower.

During the 2016 UK stadium shoot for Final Score, director Scott Mann came up with the concept for Fall. "We were filming at a height, and off-camera," according to Scott Mann, "we got into this interesting conversation about height and the fear of falling and how that's inside of all of us, really, and how that can be a great device for a movie." Tea Shop Productions, BuzzFeed Studios, Capstone Pictures, and Flawless produced the film Fall, which was filmed in the Mojave Desert's Shadow Mountains using IMAX cameras. 

Following the purchase of the distribution rights by Lionsgate Films and a positive screen test, Fall got a limited theatrical run. However, before the release, Lionsgate used the deepfake company Flawless to digitally redub many instances of "F*CK" from the dialogue to gain a PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association. Fall is the first cinematic production to utilize Flawless' services.

On an estimated $3 million budget, Fall's theatrical run brought in slightly over $16 million. The movie is available on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital. The Blu-ray special features include an Audio Commentary with Producer-Director Scott Mann and Producer James Harris; Fall: The Making of a featurette; a music video for "I Have Never Felt More Alive" by Madison Beer; and a trailer.

Despite my assumptions that it would be boring, watching two fools trapped together 2,000 feet in the air was fascinating. Who, after all, in their right mind would attempt to scale a dilapidated, rusted tower? I most certainly would not. Grace Caroline Currey and Virginia Gardner did a fantastic job acting—but their portrayals would have been more convincing if the original swear words were left intact instead of being edited out to give the movie a PG-13 classification. If I were stuck 2,000 feet above the ground, I would be cussing my ass off.

Fall is an exhilarating adrenaline ride with excellent acting and jaw-dropping special effects. I honestly thought they were on top of the basted TV tower—to the extent that I closed my eyes in fear that they might fall off. ╌★★★★★