Welp, here is about five seconds from the movie Fall:
Lots of shots of metal buckling and bolts falling loose and whatnot. So, basically, that clip plus 89 minutes of backstory about two dumb people.
Speaking of, ha ha, some of us are going to watch Fall next month.
-Tom
I guess the irony is it’s an abandoned cell tower in the middle of nowhere so it doesn’t work, which means their cell phones don’t work because there’s no tower nearby. Except the one they are on. Which doesn’t work. Irony!
Also, ha ha, you watched the trailer for Fall! Just warming up my ha ha for next month.
Stop making the movie so literary. You’re going to drive away audiences!
-Tom
Warming up my ha ha.
And a complete disregard for proper physics, but that is to be expected, I suppose.
There has to be a porn parody of this movie somewhere.
Is there a sex scene when they reach the top?
Hey what do you know, this might actually be good!
I was surprised to find out it was coming to theaters! I assumed it was a streaming release.
I assume that’s just positioning for awards season.
fixed
Pretty crazy.
That reminds me of – I think it was a William Gibson book? – where one of the characters had a job digitally editing old movies where people were smoking, since smoking was now considered vile.
Needs more cell phone.
It would be one thing if this was a MacGyver-like film where the women use their ingenuity and some implausible hacks to get out of a desperate situation. But in this film they do absolutely everything in the stupidest possible way. They’re supposedly climbing pros but have no idea how to use their equipment. They bring a static line for falling safety. They have never heard of rappelling apparently, nor how to rig a pulley system with the carabiners they have. They consistently fail to use or even consider their most valuable piece of equipment: the rope. Worried about falling off a small ledge you’re stuck on? Why not tie your climbing harness to the big metal pole sticking out of it?
There were a few tense moments here, and the film was surprisingly better than I expected. But it failed where it didn’t need to. The effects are great, the acting is serviceable, and the action is nail biting. But the whole thing is undermined by the characters being the opposite of clever.
And what 20-something WWE fan, when asked to name their favorite wrestlers, would say Steve Austin and The Rock? What the hell scriptwriter?
Even from the trailer, that was my primary WTF.
Because then if one of you admit to infidelity the other one MIGHT PUSH YOU OFF and that’s fun.
Dumber than two boxes of rocks, but I agree, @Matt_W. At least it had a decent plot twist up its sleeve. That’s more than I expected. But since it was going to be so character-based, it’s a shame those poor actresses weren’t given more to work with. They were basically written as Scared Sad Girl and Happy Tits Girl. That was pretty much the extent of their characterizations, and the script was mostly just an excuse for the dumbass writers – it took two of them – to call out their favorite pro wrestlers, as you noted.
I was pleasantly surprised to discover the Booksmart guy was in this, after also appearing in the Scream reboot. Oh. Never mind.
My biggest disappointment is how poorly the movie was shot. The expected “oooh, heights are scary” bits are in there from time to time, but there’s no real craft here. Nothing to remind you of the stakes, no powerful visuals, no sense of constant fear or peril, just a couple of girl chilling on a modest set against a greenscreen.
It’s amazing to me how long a shadow The Descent casts over these crappy movies. Andrew Traucki’s horrible Reef sequel comes to mind, which I just saw. Even this dumb thing uses the same template:
Traumatized woman goes on vacation reluctantly, but then something goes terribly wrong, and in the fight for survival, she learns she was betrayed by her best friend sleeping with her boyfriend/husband, which galvanizes her to fight for survival even harder! It’s like the opposite of the Bechdel Test: it always comes down to a man.
But Jeff Fahey though! I thought that guy dropped off the face of the earth.
Well said.