Whether that moment was real or apocryphal, we know it as a prime example of how movies are pitched to someone who has the chance to greenlight them. This hypothetical pitch hypothetically occurs on an elevator up to the office of the person who's making that decision, so they don't have very much time to receive it before they have to turn their attention to indisputably more important things. So it has to be quick, like 20 seconds or less -- or in some cases, just five words.
The other common way of pitching something, other than "such-and-such popular movie in a different setting," is "such-and-such movie meets such-and-such movie," like "Terms of Endearment meets Mad Mux Fury Road." But we only care about the first one today.
The movie I saw last night? Yeah, it's "Fall on a shark."
If you're having trouble remembering Fall, well that's too bad for its producers, who are relying on your memory of it in order to release Fall 2: Deadpoint in September.
But in case you are, here's its poster:
Which really tells you everything you need to know about this particular movie in one image. Making it like a good elevator pitch in that way.
What do these two posters have in common?
Well, you can hardly see her in the Fall poster, but you can see her better in Killer Whale. That's Virginia Gardner, the blonde, who is the star of both movies.
I can tell you the other reasons that Killer Whale is "Fall on a shark," but first I'll have to give a big fat SPOILER WARNING for both films, but perhaps more importantly -- and first, to give you time to avert your eyes -- I'll have to tell you why I'm talking about sharks when the movie is clearly about a whale.
No the movie is not literally about a shark. But it's about the sort of threat traditionally posed by a shark, and in that case, this whale is a "shark," especially in the quick and dirty terms that are required to give this studio executive instant clarity on the project he's about to greenlight and how much money it will make him. (Or her, but usually him.) Besides, you can't use the same word in the title as you use in the pitch. Saying this movie is "Fall on a killer whale" and then calling it Killer Whale is kind of like saying it's "Die Hard on a bus" and then calling it Speed Bus.
Okay so the similarities.
In both movies, two young women in their late 20s/early 30s -- Gardner is currently 31 -- set out on an adventure of sorts that leaves them stranded in a place where they have no food/water, no means of communicating with anyone, and no realistic path to safety. In Fall, they are marooned at the top of a comms tower that looks like it's about two miles off the ground, when some of the rusty infrastructure they used to get there breaks off the tower and falls to the earth. In Killer Whale, they've travelled by jet ski to a remote Thai cove with some little clumps of what could generously be called islands, one of which becomes their home when a killer whale comes through and tries to start mauling them.
In both movies, they come up with a variety of strategies to try to get off this island, each increasingly more desperate, each doomed to failure in the short run.
In both movies, one of the women is trying to forget a recent tragedy in which their boyfriend was killed. For the character in Fall, it's an opening rock climbing death, which makes it very similar in structure to both the recent Apex and the long-ago Sylvester Stallone vehicle Cliffhanger -- oops, spoilers for Apex and Cliffhanger, but you can see it coming from a mile away. For the character in Killer Whale, it's a robbery attempt that led to her boyfriend being hit by a car going full speed -- yes, another bad trope. (So yes, he survives a struggle with a gunman only to be hit by a car. It's a bit much.)
And in both movies, the friend who isn't going to make it -- because come on, they can't both make it -- is guilty of some sort of transgression against the friend who is going to survive. In Fall, it's having slept with/had a relationship with the boyfriend who died. In Killer Whale, it's having set up the robbery attempt, when they thought no one was supposed to be there. Anyway, they pay for it by becoming whale food or gravity food.
Biggest difference? Gardner plays the bad friend in Fall and the good friend in Killer Whale. What range! I guess she didn't want to be typecast?
Next biggest difference? One movie is pretty good and the other movie is terrible!
Yes, I was not a Killer Whale fan, but I suspect not many people are -- which doesn't mean it won't be a hit on Netflix, or hasn't already been. I mean, if a sophisticated cinephile like myself prioritizes seeing Killer Whale, just think about all the people with less discerning tastes and how quickly they'll go for it.
But truly, this is one of the year's worst, and if you want other tropes this movie uses and abuses in terms of its credibility, it's the scene where a character holds her breath underwater for, oh, eight or nine minutes. And when she returns to the surface, it really just takes one big gulp of air to regain her equilibrium. (It might have helped if she was supposed to be some sort of underwater pro, but the things we know about her is that she used to be a concert cellist but that she required hearing aids after the shotgun blast in the robbery attempt.)
I thought Gardner was quite good in Fall, but she's terrible here, which just goes to show you the importance of a good director. I don't know either Fall director Scott Mann nor Killer Whale director Jo-Anne Brechin from a hole in the ground, but from the evidence, it would appear Mann is good at his job and Brechin is not good at hers.
Last catty comment: The set involving the little island clump the characters are stranded on is more of a set than any set I have ever seen in a movie, ever, even the ones back in the 1920s and 1930s where you knew it was impossible that it was anything other than a set.
But you know, maybe see Killer Whale if you want a few laughs throughout. Shamu playing the role of a killer is never not funny. (I said the previous one was going to be my last catty comment. Oops.)
