Fall Parent Guide

Becky (Grace Fulton), her husband Dan (Mason Gooding), and her best friend Hunter (Virginia Gardner) are all enthusiastic climbers. When Dan is killed in a tragic accident while scaling a mountain, Becky gives up not just on climbing, but on life.

Determined to drag Becky out of her apartment, Hunter concocts a plan. For the past year, she’s been globe-hopping, doing insane climbs for a YouTube channel. Now she’s found something closer to home and she wants Becky to come with her. The plan is to scale a 2,000-foot-tall disused television tower, filming content for Hunter’s YouTube channel along the way, and then scatter Dan’s ashes from the top. But 2,000 feet is a long way to go, and all they’ve got is some water, Hunter’s drone, and 50 feet of rope…

There’s no tactful way to say it: this movie is a mess. Becky is a gaping hole where the screenwriter forgot to put a personality, and Hunter is simply aggravating. Both characters seem incapable of rational decision making, even within the context of high risk climbing, but the plot depends on them being slightly dumber than a sack of hair. It’s just lazy writing.

Sadly, the bad writing doesn’t stop there. Hunter is wearing several pushup bras in a lowcut top, which the writers excuse in dialogue by saying she’s just showing off to get more views on her channel. While I’m not saying that’s not a factor in online content optimization (one which this website is unlikely to adopt, like it or not), it’s a completely unnecessary addition to the film. This “wardrobe” choice has obviously been made to boost the film’s views and not to appeal to a fictional digital audience. Honestly, this is 2022. Aren’t we beyond appealing to the male gaze in a cheap attempt to get eyes on the screen?

If the jiggle isn’t annoying enough, this production has recurring continuity issues. Among other things, the rope appears and disappears randomly as the camera cuts between close ups and wide shots. If you’re still not discouraged, the profanity might finish you off. For a PG-13 movie, there’s a lot of scatological profanity, and if the “Trivia” section on the IMDb page is to be believed, the production crew dubbed out around 30 f-bombs to take Fall from Restricted to PG-13. It would certainly explain how frequently adult characters in a life-or-death situation say “freaking”. That’s about all the family-friendly editing they did, though, because there’s also quite a bit of gore, making this a dubious choice for younger audiences who would otherwise be willing to put up with the irritating characters and poor writing. Frankly, I wouldn’t watch this if you paid me…at least, not twice.