The dizzying thriller Fall does for heights what The Descent did for depths

Some movie and TV stories, described to someone who hasn’t seen them, invariably sound cooler than they are. (Just try to sum up the plot of Disney Plus’ The Acolyte without sounding like you’re trying to sell it.) Others are just never going to sound like good ideas, no matter how well they’re executed. Scott Mann’s 2022 horror-thriller Fall, newly arrived on Hulu, is one of the latter — there’s just no way to avoid how cheesy the premise sounds. “Two women climb a TV tower and get stuck at the top” sounds like an unlikely premise for a heart-stopping adventure movie. But execution is everything. If you can get past that premise and a few early, mild narrative missteps, Fall is surprisingly terrifying — a truly vertiginous, visceral experience designed to bring out the latent acrophobe in everyone. Grace Caroline Currey (Shazam! / Shazam!: Fury of the Gods) stars as Becky Connor, a former free-climbing enthusiast who’s still reeling from the death of her husband Dan (Mason Gooding, of the new batch of Scream movies) during a climb. On the one-year anniversary of his death, she’s drinking herself into a stupor and contemplating suicide when her best friend Hunter (Virginia Gardner, F*** Marry Kill) shows up to try to lure her out of isolation and drag her back to their hobby. [Image: https://platform.polygon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/MCDFALL_LG014.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] Hunter, an enthusiastic daredevil trying to build a following as a YouTube star, has a new stunt in mind: a climb up a 2,000-foot decommissioned TV antenna, described as the former tallest structure in America. She wants Becky to come along, face her (entirely reasonable!) fears about climbing, and scatter Dan’s ashes from the top of the tower as a step toward emotional closure. Obviously, things go wrong, and obviously, once the two women get stuck on the tower, they can’t get phone reception to call for help. Fall mostly operates along broad, familiar beats, though Mann and co-writer Jonathan Frank use viewers’ familiarity with those beats to goose the tension: With every step Becky and Hunter take up the dilapidated, fragile-feeling tower, it seems more and more inevitable that they’re putting themselves in lethal danger, with no plausible way out once the crisis hits. A lot of the rest of the film’s run time plays out like 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Shallows, or other standout small-scale thrillers, where the protagonists have to get inventive about staging their own rescue with minimal resources and a ticking clock. But while Becky and Hunter are resourceful, and come up with some clever ideas, Fall’s real tension isn’t in their escape attempts or even in the personal grievances that emerge once they’re in a life-threatening situation. It’s all in Tim Despic’s queasy cinematography, which makes the danger seem plausible and immersive from the opening sequence on. “Stuck on top of a tower” just doesn’t sound as dangerous as “Stranded in shark-infested waters” or “Locked in a bunker with an unpredictable psychopath,” but Despic and Mann make the isolated location, the harsh desert conditions, and the creaky tower feel terrifyingly oppressive. What The Descent did for oppressive depths, Fall does for heights. Fall’s unlikely premise even winds up working for it. Horror fans have seen plenty of victims stranded in the woods or wilds, stuck at sea or trapped deep underground. But Fall’s setting feels unique, and it lends itself readily to breathless visuals and heart-stopping plunges. The deep irony is that Becky and Hunter are high enough to see where help might come from, and yet they’re completely isolated: The movie plays with that in a variety of ways, exploring how easy it is to seem beyond other people’s reach even in a populated setting. [Image: https://platform.polygon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/MCDFALL_LG007.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] Fall isn’t a perfect little thriller. The setup mixes Becky’s real anguish with some questionable plot devices: She’s just starting to take a whole bottle of prescription medicine when Hunter unexpectedly arrives, which seems both melodramatic and in questionable taste. More ridiculous is the conceit that has her calling Dan just to hear his voicemail message again, and pretend she’s talking to him (she’s still paying for his account after a year?), then dramatically calling him again minutes later after another emotional setback, only to find the number’s suddenly been disconnected. (So… she isn’t paying for his account but it took a year to disconnect? What exactly is the idea here?) But the film is full of small character touches that make Becky and Hunter realized enough characters for their drama to matter. The same early setup has Hunter cheerfully putting on a ditzy persona for her YouTube followers, then exulting when one of her posts gets 300 likes. The last decade or so of horror movies has been brutal about would-be influencers, making a running joke out of victims who get themselves in deep trouble while pursuing the footage that will launch them to viral fame. Fall follows suit, but has some seeming sympathy for Hunter’s small-scale ambitions, and the way she’s trying to make a business out of adventures she already loves, instead of faking a fandom for clicks. Still, Fall isn’t ultimately about the plotting or the characters. It’s about the physical sensations it evokes, the effective and startling imagery of great heights and dramatic falls. If you white-knuckled your way through Free Solo or parts of Man on Wire, this one’s guaranteed to tap into that same sense of anxiety. It’s even a movie designed for streaming, with an immediately grabby opening sequence setting up how the rest of the film will feel. Don’t judge it from the plot description, just give it a couple minutes of your streaming time and it’s likely to lure you in. Fall is streaming on Hulu and Peacock, and is available for digital rental or purchase on Apple TV, Fandango at Home, and other digital platforms.