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Fall (2022 film)

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Fall
Theatrical release poster
Directed byScott Mann
Written by
  • Scott Mann
  • Jonathan Frank
Produced by
  • Christian Mercuri
  • James Harris
  • Mark Lane
  • Scott Mann
  • David Haring
Starring
CinematographyMiguel "MacGregor" Olaso
Edited byRob Hall
Music byTim Despic
Production
companies
Distributed byLionsgate
Release date
  • August 12, 2022 (2022-08-12) (United States)
Running time
107 minutes
Countries
  • United States
  • United Kingdom[1]
LanguageEnglish
Budget$3 million
Box office$20.7 million

Fall is a 2022 survival thriller film directed and co-written by Scott Mann and Jonathan Frank. Starring Grace Caroline Currey, Virginia Gardner, Mason Gooding, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the film is about two women who climb a 2,000 feet (610 m) tall radio tower and get stranded at the top with no way down.

Fall was theatrically released in the United States on August 12, 2022, by Lionsgate Films. The film was a box office success, grossing $20.7 million worldwide against a $3 million budget and received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised Mann's direction, the atmosphere, cinematography, suspense, and the performances of Currey and Gardner, but criticized its screenplay, special effects and pacing.

Plot

Best friends Becky and Hunter are climbing a mountain with Becky's husband, Dan, who loses his footing and falls to his death. Nearly a year later, Becky is depressed and abusing alcohol. She has estranged herself from her father, James, because he suggested that Dan was not the right guy for her. Just before the anniversary of Dan's death, Hunter invites her to climb the decommissioned 2,000 feet (610 m) B67 TV tower in the desert, where she can scatter Dan's ashes as a form of therapy. Becky at first refuses, then changes her mind and agrees to go so that she can finally move on from Dan's death.

The next day, Hunter and Becky begin the climb. At the top, Becky scatters the ashes, finally letting Dan go. As they begin the climb down, however, the corroded ladder breaks apart, stranding them several hundred feet above the next intact section. Moreover, the backpack with their water and a drone has fallen onto a communications dish, just beyond their rope's reach. Despite being miles from anyone, Hunter is confident that emergency services will have heard the crash of the ladder and be on their way, but help never arrives. They try to use their cellphones, but suspect that radio interference from the communications dish is blocking the signal. Hunter sends a message to her 60,000 internet followers for help and intentionally drops her phone off the tower after packing it inside one of her shoes, but the padding is insufficient, and the cellphone is destroyed before the message transmits.

The pair later notice an RV nearby, with two men camping. They wait until dark and fire a flare gun found in an emergency box at the top of the tower. The men see it, but instead of helping them, they steal Hunter's Ford Bronco and drive off.

As night falls, Becky notices a tattoo on Hunter's ankle; it is the number code "1-4-3" that Dan used to tell Becky he loved her. Hunter tearfully admits to a four-month affair that Dan drunkenly initiated and continued until shortly before the wedding day, but Becky is unmoved by Hunter's apologies. The next day, as penance for the affair, Hunter climbs down and gets the backpack before they die of thirst. Hunter manages to attach the backpack to the just-short rope, then leaps to it and climbs up. Hunter encourages Becky to use the drone to carry a written message for help to the diner a few miles away, but it is hit by a semi truck before it reaches the diner.

Becky is delirious from the lack of food and water, but a brief lucid moment allows her to realize that she has hallucinated Hunter's presence for days after Hunter died from a fall onto the communications dish when she was climbing back up. The next day, Becky is awakened by a vulture gnawing at her wounded leg and kills it, eating it for sustenance. In one last attempt to get help, Becky climbs down to the dish, sends a text message to her father, then puts the phone into Hunter's corpse and pushes it off the tower. The message transmits, and James alerts the emergency services. He rushes to the tower, where he reconciles with his rescued daughter.

Cast

Production

Filming

The KXTV/KOVR tower in California inspired the look of the radio tower in the film.

Originally the film had been intended as a short. According to director Scott Mann, the idea came to him while he was shooting Final Score at a stadium in the U.K.: "We were filming at height, and off camera 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." Fall was filmed in IMAX format in the Shadow Mountains, in California's Mojave Desert. The look of the fictitious B67 tower in the film was inspired by the real KXTV/KOVR tower, a radio tower in Walnut Grove, California, which is 2,049 ft (625 m) high and one of the tallest structures in the world. According to director Scott Mann, the filmmakers had considered green screen or digital sets, but ultimately opted for the real thing. They decided to build the upper portion of the tower on top of a mountain so that the actors would really appear to be thousands of feet in the air, even though in real life they were never more than a hundred feet off the ground. Filming was difficult, because often weather such as lightning and strong winds would pose a challenge.[2][3] The film cost $3 million to produce.[4]

Post-production

Although the film was produced by Tea Shop Productions and Capstone Pictures, once production finished, Lionsgate Films acquired the film's distribution rights without a minimum guarantee for the producers. After it did well in test screenings, Lionsgate decided to release it in theaters.[5] They ordered the crew to change or remove over 30 uses of the word "fuck" from the film so it could earn a PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association instead of a likely R-rating, to increase profitability. As reshooting the scenes would have been time-consuming and expensive, they turned to Flawless, a company established in 2021 by Nick Lynes and Fall director Scott Mann, to deepfake the actor's faces and artificially redub the "fuck"s they said to PG-13-acceptable epithets like "freaking." The first project to use Flawless's services, Fall did earn a PG-13 rating. According to Mann, "neural reshoots" were completed within two weeks during the final stages of post-production.[4][6]

Release

The film was released in theaters in the United States on August 12, 2022, by Lionsgate.[7] Lionsgate spent $4 million to release and promote the film.[5]

The film was released digitally on September 27, 2022, followed by a Blu-ray and DVD release on October 18, 2022.[8]

Reception

Box office

In the United States and Canada, Fall was released August 12, 2022, alongside Mack & Rita and the wide expansion of Bodies Bodies Bodies, and was projected to gross $1–2 million from 1,548 theaters in its opening weekend.[9] It made $923,000 on its first day,[10] and went on to debut to $2.5 million; while finishing 10th at the box office, it was the highest earning new release for the week.[11] As of 15 January 2023, still showing in China (following a November 18 release), it has grossed $7.2 million in the United States and Canada and $13.5 million in other territories, for total box office of $20.7 million[12] against its $3 million budget.[4]

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 79% of 141 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.4/10. The website's consensus reads: "Fundamentally absurd yet as evocatively minimalist as its title, Fall is a sustained adrenaline rush for viewers willing to suspend disbelief."[13] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 62 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[14]

References

  1. ^ "Fall (2022)". letterboxd.com. Retrieved September 6, 2022.
  2. ^ Cremona, Patrick (September 2, 2022). "How they filmed Fall: 'The fear of heights and falling is in us all'". Radio Times. Retrieved January 16, 2023.
  3. ^ Scott Mann (August 12, 2022). Director of New Fall Movie Says Actors Were Never More Than 100 Feet High (video). Inside Edition. Retrieved August 16, 2022.
  4. ^ a b c Spangler, Todd (August 9, 2022). "Lionsgate's Fall Used Deepfake-Style Tech to Change 30-Plus F-Bombs, Bringing Movie From R to PG-13 Rating". Variety. Retrieved August 10, 2022. had a production budget of about $3 million
  5. ^ a b D'Alessandro, Anthony (August 12, 2022). "Bullet Train Heading For $12M+ Second Weekend During Sluggish Summer Frame – Friday PM Update". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved August 13, 2022.
  6. ^ Goldsmith, Jill (August 14, 2022). "Director Scott Mann's AI Startup Helps Fall Nab PG-13 Rating, $2.5M Open – Specialty Box Office". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved August 14, 2022.
  7. ^ Griffin, David (June 8, 2022). "Fall: Exclusive Trailer and Movie Poster Reveal". IGN. Retrieved June 9, 2022.
  8. ^ "Fall DVD Release Date". www.dvdsreleasedates.com. Retrieved October 27, 2022.
  9. ^ Rubin, Rebecca (August 10, 2022). "Box Office: Lionsgate's Action-Thriller Fall and A24's Bodies Bodies Bodies Hope to Benefit From Utter Lack of New Blockbusters". Variety. Retrieved August 10, 2022.
  10. ^ Murphy, J. Kim (August 13, 2022). "Bullet Train Repeating on Top as August Box Office Slows Down". Variety. Retrieved August 13, 2022.
  11. ^ "Fall". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Retrieved January 16, 2023.Edit this at Wikidata
  12. ^ "Fall". The Numbers. Nash Information Services, LLC. Retrieved January 16, 2023.
  13. ^ "Fall". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved January 16, 2023. Edit this at Wikidata
  14. ^ "Fall". Metacritic. Fandom, Inc. Retrieved January 16, 2023.
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