Don't Look Down

Carla Engel (Megan Ward) is married with the photographer Mark (Billy Burke) and they are in love with each other. One day, while shooting pictures of Carla and her sister Rachel (Tara Spencer-Nairn) in a cliff, the parapet fails and Rachel falls down in the precipice, immediately dying. Carla becomes acrophobiac and tries to get over her trauma joining a group having acrophobia and treated by Dr. Paul Sadowski (Terry Kinney). The members of the group start to get mysteriously killed one by one, apparently by the ghost of Rachel. Carla begins to doubt of her sanity. The killer is revealed only in the last scene. This movie is another bureaucratic, predictable and full of clichés thriller. The name of Wes Craven and beauty of Megan Ward are the greatest attractions of this low budget TV movie. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): `Não Olhe Para Baixo' (`Don´t Look Down')

Megan Ward is a fantastic actress and is underutilized in Hollywood in general. Wes Craven is a great writer, although he is instead credited as executive producer here. Maybe this movie helped those with acrophobia I don't know. I figured out the entire plot in the first 5 minutes of the movie. Watching the rest of it to see the pieces fall into place was, unfortunately, boring. There was a cute reference to Megan's 1st movie "Crash and Burn". And the character of Dr. Paul Sadowski appears to be named after the associate producer Peter Sadowski? Most of the scenes competently conveyed the overall sense of fear and paranoia, they just were not all that scary. Anyway not too bad for a TV thriller I guess, just way to predictable.

Seeing the name Wes Craven here, I was expecting far more in the way of horror if not suspense. Disappointed on both accounts. In a word, silly. The acting was extremely bad with second rate, basically unknown, actors. I'm undecided as if it was the story that was lacking and Meryl Streep could have made it quite interesting, or if it was just a terrible plot and an uninspired director. Either way, don't say you haven't been warned. Better to spend those 2 hours of your life rewatching one of your favorite movies. Try Alfred Hitchcock.

Like most people who viewed this movie I suspect, I picked up this movie because Wes Craven's name was listed prominently on the cover, in the credits on the back, etc. Lo and behold, this is not directed, written, nor overseen by Mr. Craven, but only produced by him. A sad case of marketing over matter. Well, who cares, right? I do, because what lay inside the DVD case was a fairly mediocre movie that doesn't seem to know if it's a psycho-thriller or a character study or a murder mystery. Kinney's take as the psychologist is the only really good acting here (the heroine is particularly dull in her delivery) and the cinematography, which should make us vertiginous, just feels static. There was a bit here to work with, script and plot wise, but it's been done (Diabolique, Vertigo, Mousetrap) before, and done better. C-.

It's a low cost production film where a woman sees her beloved sister fall from the top of a hill and die. Since then, she's afraid of the high (she feels like an acrophobic) and starts having "visions" of her sister and starts hearing a ghostly voice whispering her name (Carla).

The plot is a bit straight and unoriginal and the twist near the end is quite predictable, what makes this film completely average; though, as it's a low cost production, made for TV, I won't be very rough and I will score it with a "pushed up" 5/10…

Oh! I almost forgot to mention that Wes Craven's name is, obviously, just to call attention to this low cost movie!