Directed and co-written by Scott Mann, along with co-writer Jonathan Frank, “Fall” tells the story of Hunter (Virginia Gardner) and Becky (Grace Caroline Currey), who decide to go on a climbing trip one year after Dan’s (Mason Gooding) death. And the thing that they intend to climb is a 2000-foot-long abandoned radio tower. Since it’s been abandoned, it’s not in good shape. The red flags show up very early on while climbing up, and Becky even points them out. But Hunter soldiers on, and Becky follows suit. While climbing down, though, the entire ladder (which is the only way out of there) collapses, thereby stranding them with no phone signal, no water, and no one in sight to locate them. As expected, it is a straightforward film filled with chills and thrills. That said, there’s one jaw-dropping twist in the third act. So let’s talk about it.
Spoilers Ahead
The Vultures And Other Moments That Set-up The Final Twist In “Fall.”
Right from the beginning, the vultures at the base of the tower are established to be the omens of death. Then the girls go up, the ladder comes crashing down, and they get stuck. Becky and Hunter try various methods to get help, with the most tangible one being grabbing the attention of two dudes who arrive near the tower to chill. They do manage to notify those men that they are stuck up there. But, instead of helping the girls, those two guys drive away with Hunter’s car. Later that night, after noticing it a couple of times, Becky finally asks Hunter why she has Dan’s way of saying “I Love You,” i.e., 143, tattooed on her leg. With nowhere else to hide her truth, Hunter admits she has been cheating with Dan for some time, thereby making the already tense situation all the more tense.
In a last-ditch attempt to get the bag (which has the water bottle and the drone in it) lying on the unreachable dish antenna below them, and probably to atone for her sins, Hunter offers to go down and get it. After a lot of effort, she gets to the dish. She gets the bag. She attaches it to the rope that she used to get to the dish antenna. She gets to the rope as well. Becky pulls on it while Hunter climbs up it. But right when she’s about to get to the landing on which they’ve been sitting all this time, Hunter slips, and apparently, her fall is broken by the bag dangling at the end of the rope. She says that she can’t climb up because she has injured her hands, and hence, Becky has to pull her up. So, Becky pulls her up and retrieves both Hunter and the bag.
They realize that the drone doesn’t have enough power, and so they can’t use it to send a message to anyone nearby. Later that night, Becky has a nightmare where she sees Hunter being eaten by a vulture. She wakes up and comes up with the idea of using Hunter’s technique of using light bulbs to recharge things. The following day, she climbs to the top of the post and uses the socket of the aviation light to recharge the drone. While being up there, she is repeatedly attacked by vultures, which causes her to drop the bag. Once the drone is recharged, she gets back to the landing and asks Hunter why she didn’t catch the bag and let it fall to the ground. She mumbles something but doesn’t give a straight answer. Later, while trying to stay awake until the diner opens and they can send the drone to it, Hunter talks about wrestling icons even though she isn’t a fan.
‘Fall’ Ending Explained: What Does Becky Do After Hunter’s ‘Fight Club’ Moment?
Becky doesn’t make too much of Hunter’s knowledge of famous wrestling icons and proceeds to use the drone to send an SOS message to the diner. But that mission fails as a truck crashes into it. Becky accepts her fate as she looks at an incoming storm while a vulture sits atop the post. Hunter tells her to stay strong as the vultures are waiting for her to go to sleep so that they can come and gnaw at her wound. She even tells Becky to eat something for sustenance. Becky says that they should try to send a message by putting her phone in Hunter’s remaining shoe, padding it better, and throwing it to the ground in the hopes that it’ll get a signal there and notify her father (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). Hunter says that she can’t give her the shoe because she’s not up there with Becky. She’s down there on the dish.
Yes, that’s the big kicker in the movie. When Hunter fell while trying to retrieve the bag, her fall wasn’t broken by the bag. She missed it, landed on the antenna dish, and died instantly. Becky pulled the bag back to her. She did notice that Hunter had passed away. That’s exactly what she saw in her nightmare. But, partly due to her exhaustion and partly to preserve her sanity, she started to imagine that Hunter was alive and with her. So, the vultures didn’t appear near her for nothing. They arrived to eat Hunter. After realizing that Hunter isn’t with her anymore, Becky records a message for her father. She then pretends to be dead so that a vulture gets super close to her injured foot. And after finding the opportune moment, she breaks the vulture’s neck, bludgeons it to death, and proceeds to eat it raw. Bear Grylls will be proud.
After gaining some energy, Becky decides to drop down to the dish antenna on which Hunter’s body is resting. She stares down at the vulture pecking on Hunter’s body, forcing it to fly away. Then she types in a message for her father and stuffs it into Hunter’s remaining shoe. But, just to be sure that the phone hits the ground undamaged, she stuffs the shoe into Hunter’s open wound and then sends the body to the ground. Thankfully, we don’t see what happens to Hunter’s body. The fact that Becky’s father, along with several rescue teams, arrive at the tower means that that gruesome method did the trick, and someone brought Becky down via a helicopter. Becky’s father notices the body bag first and assumes that Becky is dead. However, after Becky calls out to him, he heaves a sigh of relief. They run into each other’s arms and feel grateful that the whole ordeal didn’t end in any other way.
