The first few minutes of Fall convinced me nobody who spends any time outdoors helped make this movie. The rest of this movie confirmed my suspicions

*spoilers*

Fall opens with three rock climbing musketeers, Becky, Hunter, and Dan. Becky and Hunter are best friends. All three of them are supposedly experienced mountain climbers; Hunter is even free soloing.

Trashbag Dan is Becky’s unfaithful husband who falls to his death eight seconds into the movie.

Becky is depressed after the death of Trashbag Dan. In her defense, she’s unaware he was cheating on her with her best friend.

Becky’s dad, James, is like, “build a bridge and get over it. I never liked that loser, and you shouldn’t have married that POS.” Somehow, he stops short of saying Dan deserved to die. He also seems unaware Dan was cheating.

To add to her woes, Hunter ghosts Becky after Dan’s death. She reappears to gaslight Becky, who hasn’t climbed in over a year, into climbing an abandoned radio tower.

How they start climbing this tower is a problem.

Becky:

• hasn’t climbed in a year
  • while she‘s probably in decent shape, it’s unbelievable she’d attempt something like this with no preparation
• doesn’t want to go

Furthermore, Becky and Hunter embark on their adventure… and tell no one where they’re going. Again, nobody who spends any time outdoors worked on this movie because the first rule of doing anything outdoorsy as a woman, especially when you know you’ll have no cell phone service, is to tell someone where you’re going and what time to call the police if they don’t hear from you.

However, there was a rather easy way to get them onto the tower without making anyone lose brain cells: make their decision to climb spontaneous rather than something planned ahead of time.

1. Hunter takes Becky on a camping road trip, hoping to cheer her up and make content for her channel
2. The town they’re staying in has spotty service *inserts any town in West Virginia*
3. They see the tower during breakfast. Hunter’s like, “we should climb that! The old Becky wouldn’t be such a weak, cowardly hoe, it’ll be great content, and you’ll get over your PTSD.”
   • This would explain them hiking in literal Converse with 10 ounces of water and no food, because their decision to climb was an in-the-heat-of-the-moment decision and NOT planned out ahead of time
4. Nevertheless, Becky’s uncertain about climbing the tower. She tries to tell her dad, but with no service she can’t get in touch with him
5. Consequently, Hunter fails to gaslight Becky and climbs the tower on her own
6. Hunter fakes some emergency, prompting Becky to climb the tower only for Hunter to be like, “lol, gotcha!”
7. Becky is now confident, something about female empowerment and not needing men, and they continue their ascent

My next issue is that Becky and Hunter climb the tower equivalent of the Titan submersible. Unless they had a death wish, no experienced climber would climb that. Particularly with no backup plan.

To be fair, Hunter does have a death wish, because she feels guilty for cheating with her best friend’s husband and is also sad, because she couldn’t publicly mourn Dan. So, her actions do make sense.

That said, the simplest solution is to make the tower less raggedy, and have a storm destabilise it.

• as they’re climbing, a storm is brewing
• they’re almost at the top, though. yay!
• they keep going to avoid getting caught climbing during the storm
• once at the top, the storm blows through and (unbeknownst to them) destabilizes the ladder
• the girls laugh about nearly dying, take photos, videos, etc.
• the ladder falls when Becky attempts to descend

I’d also have one of them lose their phone during the storm (more on that later).

Once they’re stuck, I genuinely don’t get how they couldn’t find a way down. Did they really try calling 911? Why do they not have a Garmin inReach? Why does nobody know where they are? Why did they not remove the light bulb?

Again, their lack of preparedness is slightly more believable if they hadn’t planned to climb the tower, but decided to do so spontaneously. Experienced people overestimating their abilities and dying is common.

Waiting to see if someone heard the ladder fall is reasonable given how close they are to civilization. Trying to catch the attention of the redneck meth heads was also smart.

However, both of them are experienced climbers. Becky and Hunter both get down to the satellites. Why do they not climb to a satellite and use the drone to send a text before they’re exhausted and out of water?

Even if the drone needed to be charged, one of them gets to the satellites and attaches the drone to the rope. The other pulls the drone up, charges it, attaches the phone to the drone, flies the drone lower, and sends a text. Boom. They’re rescued.

Instead, Hunter pads her shoe with her bra, stuffs her phone in it, and drops it, leaving them with only one phone.

Furthermore, Becky wastes her phone’s battery watching videos of Dead Dan instead of conserving it (?????). Obviously, this was a plot device to show how Hunter was cheating with Dan, but it’s not something someone in an emergency would do.

Hunter does fess up to cheating, makes no excuses, and also dies. She was also the one to end things, not Dan, who literally married Becky.

The only way their plot with the note and drone makes any sense is if one of them had already lost their phone earlier during the storm, and that was their last resort.

All that said, I enjoyed Fall.

It falls under the same category as a shark or zombie movie for me. Regardless of the quality of the movie, the acting, or writing, if a movie involves sharks eating people, I’m going to give it a high rating (unfortunately, I unironically love The Meg, Sharknado, and (especially) 47 Meters Down).

Similarly, if a movie involves people somehow trapped in the wilderness with no cell service, I will also give it a high rating. Fall falls into that category for me.

Fall Rating: 8.2/10