Fall (2022 film)

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 follows two women who climb a 2,000 foot (610 m) tall television broadcasting tower and become stranded at the top.

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 by
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$21.8 million

It was theatrically released in the United States on August 12, 2022 by Lionsgate Films. It was a box office success, grossing $21 million worldwide against a $3 million budget, and received generally positive reviews, with critics praising Mann's direction, the atmosphere, cinematography, suspense, and Currey's and Gardner's performances, but criticizing 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 has given up climbing and became an alcoholic shut-in. She has estranged herself from her father, James because he suggested that Dan was not the right man for her. Just before the anniversary of Dan's death, Hunter invites her to climb the decommissioned 2,000 foot (600 m) B-67 TV Tower in the desert, where she can scatter Dan's ashes as a form of healing. Becky refuses initially, 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 arrive and successfully climb a severely corroded ladder to a tiny platform at the top of the tower, where Becky scatters the ashes, finally letting Dan go. As they begin their descent, however, the ladder breaks, stranding them several hundred feet above the next intact section and almost 2,000 feet above the ground. Moreover, the backpack with their water and a small Quadcopter drone has fallen onto a communications dish, just beyond the reach of their rope.

Despite the remote location, Hunter is confident at first that emergency services will notice the crash of the ladder, but help never arrives. They try to use their cellphones but suspect that radio interference from the communications dish is blocking the signal. Hunter tries sending a message for help by packing her phone in one of her shoes and dropping it out of range of the interference, but the phone is destroyed upon impact with the ground before the message transmits.

The pair later notice two men camping in an RV nearby and try to get their attention, to no avail. They wait until dark and fire a flare gun they found in an emergency box on the pole. The men see it, but instead of helping them, they steal Hunter's vehicle and drive off.

As night falls, Becky notices a tattoo on Hunter's ankle: "1-4-3,” a numeric code Dan used to tell Becky that he loved her. Hunter tearfully admits to a four-month affair that ended shortly before Becky and Dan's wedding, but Becky is unmoved by her apologies. The next day, in penance, Hunter climbs to retrieve the backpack but nearly falls to her death. She injures her hand in the process, but successfully ties the rope to the bag, and Becky is forced to use all her remaining strength to pull both Hunter and the backpack up. Becky uses the tower's Aviation obstruction lighting warning light to charge the drone and sends it to a nearby diner with a written message for help a few miles away, but it is struck by a truck and destroyed.

Days later, Becky is delirious from the lack of food and water, but in a brief lucid moment, she remembers that when Hunter had gone for the backpack, she had actually fallen onto one of the communication dishes and was killed; Becky has been hallucinating her presence since then. The next day, Becky is awakened by a vulture gnawing at her wounded leg and kills it to eat. Her strength partially restored, Becky climbs down to the dish where Hunter’s body lies and types a text message to her father. She then puts the phone into Hunter's shoe for protection, shoves it into a hole in the corpse’s abdomen, and pushes it off the tower. Hunter’s body cushions the impact and the message transmits. Becky’s father alerts emergency services, who then rush to the tower. She is rescued and reunited with her father.

Cast

Production

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

Originally the film was 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 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 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.[2] Currey and Gardner were offered stunt doubles, but they opted to perform their own stunts.[2][3] Filming was difficult, because often weather such as lightning and strong winds posed a challenge.[4][5] The film cost $3 million to produce.[6]

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.[7] 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.[6][8]

Release

The film was released in theaters in the United States on August 12, 2022 by Lionsgate,[9] who spent $4 million releasing and promoting the film.[7]

It was released digitally on September 27, 2022, followed by Blu-ray and DVD releases on October 18, 2022.[10]

Reception

Box office

Fall grossed $7.2 million in the United States and Canada, and $14.6 million in other territories, for worldwide total of $21.8 million,[11] against its $3 million budget.[6]

In the United States and Canada, Fall was released alongside Mack & Rita and the wide expansion of Bodies Bodies Bodies, and projected to gross $1–2 million from 1,548 theaters on its opening weekend.[12] It made $923,000 on its first day,[13] 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.[14]

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."[15] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 62 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[16] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it an overall 69% positive score, with 44% saying they would definitely recommend it.[14]

Sequel

Following the popularity of the film's Netflix release, a sequel was announced in March 2023.[17][18][19]

References
  1. "Fall (2022)". letterboxd.com. Retrieved September 6, 2022.
  2. FALL: The Making Of (Blu-ray). 2022.
  3. Fall (2022 Movie) – Official Clip “Stunts” - Grace Caroline Currey, Virginia Gardner. Lionsgate Movies. September 27, 2022. Retrieved April 8, 2023.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. Griffin, David (June 8, 2022). "Fall: Exclusive Trailer and Movie Poster Reveal". IGN. Retrieved June 9, 2022.
  10. "Fall DVD Release Date". www.dvdsreleasedates.com. Retrieved October 27, 2022.
  11. "Fall". The Numbers. Nash Information Services, LLC. Retrieved January 16, 2023.
  12. 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.
  13. Murphy, J. Kim (August 13, 2022). "Bullet Train Repeating on Top as August Box Office Slows Down". Variety. Retrieved August 13, 2022.
  14. D'Alessandro, Anthony (August 13, 2022). "'Bullet Train' Second Go-Round Now At $13.3M As Summer 2022 Clocks Lowest Weekend To Date With $64M – Saturday PM Box Office Update". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on August 13, 2022. Retrieved August 14, 2022.
  15. "Fall". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved January 16, 2023.
  16. "Fall". Metacritic. Fandom, Inc. Retrieved January 16, 2023.
  17. Kanter, Jake (March 17, 2023). "'Fall' Sequel In The Works After Vertigo-Inducing Thriller Becomes Surprise Netflix Hit". Deadline. Retrieved March 18, 2023.
  18. "Horror Film Fall Getting Sequel Following Streaming Popularity". comicbook.com. Retrieved March 18, 2023.
  19. Villei, Matt (March 17, 2023). "'Fall' Sequel in the Works After Surprise Success in 2022". Collider. Retrieved March 18, 2023.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.