Fall (not Moonfall, Legends of the Fall, Falling Down, or even The Fall) is what happens when Cliffhanger and The Descent have a baby birthed by Buzzfeed Studios and it doesn’t suck. It’s not amazing and it has unfortunate downtime, but what it does, it does quite well.

The flick is about two lady mountain climbers who decide to scale a 2000 foot radio antenna just because its there. Obviously, things go perfectly smooth… zip up, zip down, get some beer…. oh, I mean, the ladder collapsed and they are stuck at the top on a 5×5 platform.

This kind of survival thriller has been done before but at least this location is unique and will terrify people with acrophobia. The sound design and visuals of the tower from a distance, from the top, from the bottom, and other angles is very well done and establishes the stakes (mainly: don’t fall off).

Yeah, it does bog down on occasion when they stop trying to figure out how to survive and start talking. But those moments were limited and I generally found the bulk of the movie pretty suspenseful. And improbable… that’s a serious metric ton of upper body strength…

The leading ladies were (almost surprisingly) not hateful… so I was able to care about their survival. There were a couple “hey why don’t you try this, dummy” moments but they were limited compared to similar movies.

I enjoyed this one reasonably well. It should have been a little shorter and cut out the padded drama but it was otherwise a pretty good time stuck on top of a 2000 foot tower.

Score: 78