At an unreasonable height – Newspaper Kommersant No. 147 (7348) of 08/13/2022

Scott Mann’s film “Fall” was released, most of which two extreme girls almost agonize on top of an abandoned 600-meter TV tower. Mikhail Trofimenkov, himself a victim of fear of heights, he experienced almost greater torment during the viewing than the heroines of the film.

The final voice-over text, a hymn to the fullness of life that any person worthy of this title should feel, recalls the dialogue of the hero Viktor Pelevin with the “animal” sirruf, wondering why he ate some kind of muck:

“I wanted to feel the beating of life,” said Tatarsky, and sobbed.

– The beat of life? Feel it, said the Sirruf.

When Tatarsky came to his senses, the only thing he wanted was that the experience he had just experienced, for which he had no words to describe, but only dark horror, would never be repeated with him again.

– You want more? Sirruf asked.

“No,” said Tatarsky, “please don’t.”

Becky (Grace Fulton) and Hunter (Virginia Gardner) did not take any substances, but, on the contrary, led a healthy lifestyle of rock climbers, until Becky’s husband, remembered by a couple of idiotic jokes, fell into the abyss. Becky did not dry out for a year and called the dead man on her mobile, until the cheerful idiot Hunter, the host of an extreme YouTube channel, appeared on her doorstep. Say, I want to bring you back to life in an original way: drag you to the notorious tower, take a selfie there, and at the same time scatter the ashes of your husband. Who would refuse such a tempting idea.

Becky squeaks, whimpers, but climbs. It doesn’t matter that she’s shaking from a year-old hangover, and the tower is rusted through and through: Hunter will still make a funny joke, swinging the ladder they are climbing so that the last rivets will fly out. It doesn’t matter that it’s forty degrees outside, and the vultures – the only natives besides the gopniks – look at the girls ahead of time with interest. Moreover, it doesn’t occur to Hunter that the tiny upper platform on which the girlfriends will be blocked is not the best place to admit: and I slept with your husband.

The genre of the film could not, perhaps, be determined by the director himself. From the screen, the intonations of a youth comedy whistle. Then the contours of a cynical black comedy about girls with reduced intellectual responsibility appear, whose any attempts to escape turn into greater disasters. Then comes the real zombie horror with giblets out and vultures pecking at bleeding flesh. But all this splendor turns out to be a hymn to the fullness of life. Although the fullness that Becky and Hunter experienced, you would not wish on the enemy.

As difficult as it is with the film genre, dealing with the emotions it evokes. Such a sticky charm. Watching your friends struggle to survive – and at least pee from 600 meters – is fascinating in its own way. The only thing they escaped in the heavenly spot was a lightning strike. The director announced a thunderstorm on the horizon, but she passed by, although one kind discharge would have saved the heroines from torment. But even the sticky charm disappears if we remember that the poor fellows with an unknown purpose drove themselves into a hopeless situation, and there is absolutely no reason to sympathize with them.