Netflix Is Streaming An Intense 2022 Survival Thriller With A Terrifying Premise

Netflix often gives commercial failures a second chance, like when Margot Robbie's 2025 fantasy box office flop "A Big Bold Beautiful Journey" hit the streamer. Sometimes, however, Netflix reintroduces us to a box office success that, for whatever reason, has since been forgotten. That's the case with "Fall," a 2022 survival thriller that made a decent profit upon its initial release before fading out of the zeitgeist. Considering this film has a terrifying premise, wherein two women become stranded atop a huge broadcasting tower, you'd think it would have stayed with viewers long after watching.

This 2022 effort is directed by British filmmaker Scott Mann, who co-wrote the script with Jonathan Frank. Like "Buried," the Ryan Reynolds thriller that Roger Ebert absolutely loved, "Fall" traps its protagonists in one place for the majority of the film. Unlike "Buried," however, stars Grace Caroline Currey and Virginia Gardner are very much above ground — about 2,000 feet, to be specific.

When Lionsgate released "Fall" back in August of 2022, it performed well, mostly due to the fact the film cost next to nothing to make. Somehow, Mann produced his survival thriller on a $3 million budget, which, when compared to the film's worldwide box office gross of $21.7 million, resulted in a tidy profit. That's doubly impressive when you consider that Mann opted to shoot most of the broadcast tower scenes in-camera rather than relying on green screen or CGI. On top of all that, "Fall" garnered positive reviews from critics. If you haven't seen it yet, now you can remedy that because the film is on Netflix, where it's scaling the most-watched charts.

"Fall" stars Grace Caroline Currey and Virginia Gardner as Becky Connor and Shiloh Hunter, two friends with a love for climbing. The film opens with a tragedy that is extremely similar to Bill Paxton's survival thriller "Vertical Limit," which is also available on Netflix. The scene sees Becky and Shiloh scale a mountain with Becky's husband Dan (Mason Gooding), who slips and falls to his death. Flash forward a year, and Becky has given up climbing altogether, but Shiloh manages to tempt her back out to commemorate her husband's passing. Instead of climbing a mountain, though, Shiloh plans to scale a decommissioned tower in the desert where the pair can scatter Dan's ashes.

Of course, rather than being a healing experience that allows Becky to finally gain some closure, the whole thing becomes a nightmare when one of the rusted ladders falls from the tower after the girls have already reached the top. Making matters worse, the pair accidentally drop their backpack with their water and drone, and their phones don't work.

That sets the stage for the rest of the film. But whereas "Fall" could have easily been a throwaway direct to video survival thriller, there are several elements that take it beyond that. For one thing, Scott Mann and his team used a specially-built upper portion of the tower which was placed on top of a mountain in the Mojave Desert. That keeps the whole thing realistic (though there are still a few dodgy CGI moments here and there). Mann also used IMAX cameras and the two stars insisted on doing their own stunts, so there's an element of believability throughout "Fall," all of which seems to have impressed audiences and critics.

Some of the the best survival thrillers have also been some of the best movies ever made. Ridley Scott's seminal 1979 space horror "Alien" would be one example, and while "Fall" isn't going to be remembered quite as fondly as that, it does what it sets out to do by delivering a two-hour jolt of adrenaline that's bolstered by the commitment to filming on-location. That resulted in some impressive reviews.

"Fall" maintains a very respectable 79% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics praising the film for being one long adrenaline rush for those willing to suspend their disbelief. In his "Fall" review, /Film's Chris Evangelista found it to be surprisingly effective if not entirely convincing, while Adam Graham of the Detroit News described it as "two hours of death-defying thrills." Variety's Owen Gleiberman similarly praised the film for "earn[ing] your clenched gut and your white knuckles."

Of course, reviewers weren't exactly impressed with "Fall" for its characters or writing, but that's surely not what anybody expects from this edge-of-your-seat survival thriller. If you go in hoping to see a ridiculous, intense, and well-crafted film, then you should have a grand old time (unless you suffer from severe vertigo). "Fall" is available to stream on Netflix and now is the perfect time to catch it, because a "Fall" trilogy has been in the works for some time and a sequel is set to arrive soon.