Rent Fall (2022)

Vertiginous excitement - Fall review by Alphaville

Two women get stuck on a 2,000ft-high tower and you’ll want to keep watching to see if they can get down. It’s so brilliantly filmed that you’ll swear the tower exists, even though a 60ft tower was the max that was used during filming. It’s also shot outside, in the desert, to give it extra authenticity. As a two-hander (mostly), you’d think the situation would pall, but these women are resourceful and the plot keeps moving.

There are a couple of downsides. Any climber will tell you that some of the rope work is dodgy and one of the women is initially an irritating vlogger for whom everything is cool or sick. Fortunately she soon drops this persona. All in all, a great example of how to make a low-budget film look good and really work.

Misclassified - it's really a comedy - Fall review by horacethefrog

Almost nothing that happens to these two irritating people is credible. Many reviewers wax lyrical about the camera work but that's all for nothing if the story doesn't hang together. About half-way in the list of absurd mishaps had become so long as to be comic to the extent it gets an extra star for unintentional humour. The ending is the final nail in the coffin of this miserable piece of cinema.

Entertaining Survival Thriller - Fall review by GI

A survivalist thriller that gets away with the sheer implausibility and ridiculousness of the story because it's all done so very well. Shunning the expense of green screen and CGi director Scott Mann opts for in camera stunts and the edits work so well you'll struggle to see any of the joins. This makes for a really tense and compelling drama even though the ending feels a little anticlimactic but is made up for with a great plot twist. Best friends, Becky (Grace Caroline Curry) and Hunter (Virginia Gardner), are adrenaline junkies but after a mountaineering accident kills her husband Becky has fallen into grief stricken depression. Hunter arrives one day with a plan to snap her out of this and suggests they climb an abandoned 2000 feet high TV tower in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Becky reluctantly agrees and off they go without telling a soul where they are going or taking sufficient supplies, such as water, with them. Once you forgive this as necessary for the drama to work the film gets quickly into the suspense as once at the top the ladder gives way trapping them with apparent little hope of rescue (no phone signal you see). But like this sort of narrative often is their predicament is a puzzle for them to unravel and it's intriguing as to how they go about it. As I say there are a couple of good plot twists one of which is pretty obvious and the other a neat way of keeping the drama moving. Overall an entertaining film, not for those who don't like heights as some of the shots are very effective, but worth checking out.

Watchable and Fun, if Silly, Scary Heights B-Movie - Fall review by PV

Very annoying characters here BUT the movie gets away with it and some other absurdities because it is well made.

Would such a tower by still up and usable? Why? Would no-one notice?> Really? As experienced climbers they'd tell people where they were going surely?

It seems these days all these sort of films have to have young female leads (all strong and independent women of course), like so many shark movies, The Shallows, 47 Metres down, and so many more. It's almost as if #metoo made a man-ban real. Ironically, what we have now is a new sexist stereotype and a real cliché. How tiresome. I hope the pendulum swings back soon so both male and female actors can play such roles.

Also, I watched a documentary on the super scary spot of free climbing (as in the start of this film but worse, NO safety ropes AT ALL there) - FREE SOLO (2018) won the best documentary Oscar even. In that, there is NOT ONE female free climber. They are all me. Every one, And mad mental bonkers, every one too! Many die. Of course. See what they do. WATCH that doc and also THE WALK (2015), the movie which I loved, and watched through my fingers, and documentary.

Moreover, a quick glance at the credits reveal this film was written, directed and produced by men and a man even did the music. So the women are, for want of a better term, eye candy. What great progress for feminism,. YAY!

Could have been 2 stars but the writer does a great job in mixing it up, increasing the jeopardy as per the scriptwriting template, but in imaginative and very 21st century ways. The husband/boyfriend issue is interesting.

Yes, it's a B-Movie - but a good one! I enjoyed it.

Some here did not like the twist - I did though I usually dislike how calculated and tricksy such plot tricks are (watch 47 METRES DOWN which is maybe where the writer here got the idea from).

3 stars