FALL

The film starts with three adrenaline junkies climbing a large rock wall. They are Becky (Grace Caroline Currey), her husband Dan (Mason Gooding), and her best friend Hunter (Virginia Gardner). During the climb, Becky has to leap from her side over to Dan, who catches her. As Dan continues his way up, he is startled by a bat flying out of its hole, and he loses his footing. Dan hangs on and tries to climb back up, but his harness comes loose and he falls to his death.

Nearly a year later, Becky has become an alcoholic and hasn’t moved on from Dan’s death. She has also avoided contact with her father James (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) ever since he told her that she shouldn’t have to keep mourning Dan because he might not have been who she thought he was, and he would not be doing the same if it were Becky that died. Becky later goes home from the bar and prepares to commit suicide by overdosing until she gets a call from Hunter. She shows up at Becky’s apartment to comfort her, as well as to propose that they climb a TV tower that is over 2000 feet high. Becky is hesitant since she hasn’t gone climbing since Dan’s death. Hunter stays with her overnight.

Becky has a nightmare that Dan is next to her in bed, dead and bloodied. When she wakes up, she tells Hunter that she remembers words that Dan told her about not being scared to live, so she agrees to go with her to the tower.

Hunter drives the two out to an area close to the tower. They stop at a diner for food, where Hunter helps Becky charge her phone by using a lamp as an outlet to plug in. They then stay at a motel for the night before their big climb.

The girls drive out toward the tower but cannot go further than the gate, leaving them to walk there. They find vultures picking off the body of a barely alive coyote, and the girls shoo the vultures away. Once they arrive, Becky almost backs out due to nerves, but Hunter convinces her to keep going. They begin their climb and stop after 1000 feet, where they observe the view so far, and Hunter comments that they have passed the height of the Eiffel Tower. As they get further up, they have to climb another 200 feet on an exterior ladder, which is rusted and rickety. Several bolts come loose as Hunter messes around while trying to climb up. The two finally make it to the top and admire the view. Hunter takes videos for her social media page and uses a drone to fly out around the area. Hunter then decides to take pics while hanging over the edge and convinces a reluctant Becky to do the same. Becky also uses the opportunity to spread Dan’s ashes from the top, which makes Hunter emotional.

When the girls decide to start climbing back down, Becky goes first and makes it to the part of the ladder where two bolts fell off. The ladder breaks loose, causing Becky to drop their bag with the drone and their water onto a satellite down below. Hunter manages to pull Becky back up using their harness, but the ladder to climb back down is completely destroyed. Becky also gets a large cut on her leg, but Hunter makes a tourniquet for it. They find binoculars and a flare gun in a compartment on the tower, but they wait to use it until necessary.

The two find that they have no signal up there to call for help. They think the sound of the ladder crashing might attract attention, but five hours pass and nobody has called for help. With the binoculars, they see a trailer parked up ahead near the gate. Hunter tries to lower her phone to get out a message for help by trying to have the message send out in a reception area. She lowers it as far as it can go and tries to go lower, but it’s no use. They decide to try and drop the phone by putting it in Hunter’s shoe and padding it with hers and Becky’s socks, plus Hunter’s sports bra so that it doesn’t break when it hits the ground. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happens.

One of the men from the trailer walks his dog near the site, and the dog finds Hunter’s shoe and the broken phone. The girls spot them and try to get their attention by throwing Becky’s shoes, but to no avail. They see that the man joins his friend to grill food, and the girls decide to wait until it’s dark enough to get their attention with the flare gun. Once the sun goes down, they make their attempt and shine the light from Becky’s phone to draw attention to themselves. However, while the two men do see the girls, they also see Hunter’s car and drive the trailer over there to steal it.

The girls start to get dehydrated and hungry. Overnight, Becky watches a video from her and Dan’s wedding, but notices Hunter looking sullen in the background. She also spots a tattoo on Hunter’s foot that says “1 4 3”, which is something that Dan would say because he would never actually tell Becky “I love you” back to her, instead just tapping the number of letters in each word. Hunter comes clean and admits that she and Dan had an affair that carried on for four months after they got drunk, and Dan made the first move. Hunter says she broke it off because, even though she had fallen in love with Dan, she loved Becky even more.

The following morning, Becky notes that it has been 24 hours since they dropped Hunter’s phone, forcing them to acknowledge that the phone is broken. Hunter then says that she can climb down to the satellite and get their bag to reach their supplies. She uses the harness to lower herself and manages to jump onto the satellite. After having some water, Hunter uses her selfie stick to hook the bag onto the harness and then use it to help herself climb back up. While trying to climb up, Hunter slips but appears to still land on the bag, albeit with her hands suffering from rope burn, forcing Becky to pull her back up.

The girls then write a note and attach it to the drone to try and send it back to the motel. The battery is too low, so they fly it back before it falls. Becky remembers Hunter’s charging hack and climbs to the very top of the tower to plug the drone in to the light outlet. When the plug won’t reach, Becky uses her wedding ring to charge the current. Becky holds on for hours while a vulture flies toward her because it smells her leg wound. Becky manages to charge it completely and flies it out. Just before the drone reaches the motel, a truck crashes into it and destroys it, and the driver fails to notice it.

Becky starts to grow more delirious from dehydration and starvation. She asks Hunter for her shoe so she can send her own phone to call for help. It is then revealed that the Hunter that she has been talking to for the last few hours was a hallucination – Hunter never landed on the bag and hit the satellite when trying to climb up, and she bled to death. Becky only pulled up the bag and was imagining Hunter to not be able to face the fact that she is up there all alone.

By the next morning, the vulture has found Becky sleeping and tries to pick at her leg. Becky then grabs the vulture by the neck and bashes it until it’s dead, and she begins to eat it. Becky realizes she has one last chance to survive, and she sends a message to James, apologizing for how she treated him when he was just looking out for her. She climbs down to the satellite and takes off Hunter’s shoe to put her phone in, and then stuffs the shoe in Hunter’s stomach since a vulture was already picking at her corpse. Becky pushes Hunter’s body off the satellite so the message can go out.

James is then seen driving toward the tower, where he finds a whole team of authorities at the scene. He finds them taking Hunter’s body, which he fears is Becky until he finds that Becky has already been rescued and brought down safely. Becky runs into James’s arms and they reconcile.