Entertainment
Perfect Netflix Thriller Is Death From Above
By Robert Scucci
| Published
My favorite kind of psychological thrillers are bottle stories because they have to make good use of their limited surroundings to generate real suspense. More often than not, stories like this can be shot on a shoestring budget and lean heavily on dialogue. An exception to that rule, 2022’s Fall is technically a bottle story, and relatively low budget given the reported $3 million that went into its production, but our protagonists aren’t chit chatting over coffee and unpacking their trauma. They’re sitting atop a 2,000 foot TV tower.
They’re still talking about their past traumas on that tower, but at least they earned that trope here because they had to climb for it.
While Fall spends most of its runtime unpacking grief at an extreme altitude, it never loses sight of what’s actually at stake. Two young women climb to the top of a decommissioned tower that becomes structurally compromised, and they have no way to get back down. Their friendship is tested, and so are their wills when they realize they have no reasonable way to contact their loved ones and let them know what kind of trouble they’re in.
Becky’s Grief And Shiloh’s Influence
The source of Becky’s (Grace Caroline Currey) trauma in Fall takes place one year prior to the TV tower incident. When her husband, Dan (Mason Gooding), falls to his death during what should have been a routine climb with her and her best friend Shiloh (Virginia Gardner), she becomes a husk of a human being, abusing her prescriptions and self medicating with alcohol. On the verge of suicide on the anniversary of Dan’s death, Becky is confronted by her father, James (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who desperately wants her to snap out of her spiral and continue living her life because Dan would have wanted her to.
Becky is finally pushed to confront her fear of climbing when Shiloh pays her a surprise visit with what she frames as the opportunity of a lifetime. Now working full time as an online influencer and adventurer, Shiloh, always proudly sporting a tight tank top so she can get more eyes on her live streams (her words, not mine), urges Becky to tag along on her next adventure. The plan is simple in theory and insane in practice. Climb a decommissioned 2,000 foot TV tower and scatter Dan’s ashes from the top.
From here on out, we get the expected dynamic between Becky and Shiloh. Becky is trapped in and defined by her trauma, while Shiloh constantly misquotes Dan’s positive platitudes as a way to convince her this is exactly what she needs. Eventually, Becky agrees.
They make the climb without realizing how many structural faults the tower has due to being decommissioned. After they reach the top, the rusted ladder system collapses beneath them, cutting off their only clear route down. With no cell service because of the tower’s interference and limited supplies, Becky and Shiloh have no way to contact their friends, families, or even Shiloh’s followers, who are periodically seeing updates from the adventure, but are used to waiting for delayed posts when she goes off the grid.
Living Is More Than Just Survival
Forced to confront her renewed fear of heights, Becky has to make peace with her past if she wants any chance at a future. She’s pushed to confront her personal demons in the worst possible setting, with Shiloh’s resourcefulness acting as a temporary guiding light. Unfortunately, nearly every plan they come up with backfires. Swinging their cell phones out far enough to catch a signal proves futile, and their quadcopter drone has limited battery life, making it impossible to reach anyone nearby before it dies.
As vultures begin circling the tower, the situation becomes more urgent by the hour. If they cannot find a solution, they will eventually succumb to dehydration, starvation, infection, or the elements. Both sustain injuries during their ordeal, and with no safe way down, their options shrink fast. At a certain point, all they can do is ration what little they have and hope that some miracle puts them back on solid ground.
Solid Twist, But It’s Been Done Before
Fall offers a couple of solid twists if you’re a psychological thriller tourist, but if you’ve been around the block a few times, you may find them less shocking than advertised. I was instantly reminded of 2018’s Adrift, which strands its characters on a sailboat in the middle of the Pacific, because the structural playbook is similar with its isolated setting, emotional trauma, and narrative reveal that reframes what you’ve been watching.
Still, if you’re a more casual fan of the genre and do not actively seek out every single entry, Fall absolutely delivers on its promises. The setup is simple, the stakes are obvious, and the execution is tense enough to keep you locked in. Sometimes that’s all you really need from a survival thriller. You know what the ride is going to feel like. The question is whether you’re willing to take it.
Fall is currently streaming on Netflix.