'FALL'....IN THE HEIGHTS....FOR REAL

 Fall (2022)......belongs to that curious little sub-genre I refer to as High Concept Primal Peril.....

              All it takes is two people thrown into an easy-to-describe, life threatening danger. Bam, that's your movie for you right there. With little or no subplots to get in its way.

              High Concept Primal Peril movies (or HCPP I'll call 'em for short) operate on one simple rule....whatever grimace-invoking situation the filmmakers devise for their two characters, they've got to stand them there.  Trap them. No escape.  As in, they ain't goin' nowhere, no how, no way.

              "Open Water" was one of the first these to...uh....make a splash, sticking its people in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by sharks. Others included "Frozen" (2 poor suckers stuck on a ski lift) and the surprise sleeper hit "47 Meters Down" (2 girls stuck inside a sunk, snapped shark cage, surrounded by.....well, you can figure it out.)

              And now, hold on to your vertigo, cause here comes "Fall".....stranding two athletic young women atop a spindly, rickety, rusty 2000 foot high abandoned TV tower. Where else but in the most remote patch of Southwest desert.   So don't look down....ooops, too late......

             The girls are Gen Z adrenalin junkies who climbed the tower for instagram and twitter clicks, so pardon me if I didn't start the movie by gnawing on my fingernails worrying about them. 

             But worry you will, cause Becky (Grace Caroline Currey and Shiloh ( Virginia Gardner) are so darn cute and every bit as ballsy as Tom Cruise when he's hanging by his thumbs to a skyscraper.

              Gaze upon the poster above, a perfect summing up of the entire film......the running time eaten up by the girls' increasingly desperate attempts to save themselves.......(you might already have guessed that these self-preservation ideas involve ever more nausea-spewing insanely dangerous stunts. 

            "Fall" takes some of its inspiration from '47 Meters Down' in that it pulls off a little plot twist in the midst of already making you sweat up a storm on behalf of its two beleaguered  heroines.....and even doubles down with another "gotcha" trick I'll dare not reveal.

             I realize many people wouldn't waste their time watching HCPPs  since by their very nature, they're so singularly manipulative and gimmicky.....the equivalent of a carnival geek show ("Step right up folks and see the bodacious babes defying death from above!")

              Then again, if you don't mind succumbing to a guilty pleasure thrill ride, you could do a lot worse than "Fall"......3 stars (***)....for those who wanna get high....ah....legally.