Review of The Ledge (2022) [ESP – ENG]

Greetings to all the members of the community, how are you? Honestly when I came across this film my expectations were not very low because I was looking for something to entertain me on a boring afternoon, but to tell the truth, I did not expect what it ended up being, especially when despite the fact that the plot is not innovative, a better result could have been achieved considering that its elements in themselves are entertaining for suspense genre films, for the potential of tension generators that they provide. To get more out of the review, I consider that in this case it is necessary to detail the events that are shown and how this affected the final result, so I warn you of the presence of spoilers in case you were planning to see it.

Right off the bat we have two friends named Kelly (Brittany Ashworth) and Sophie (Anaïs Parello) who are preparing to climb one of the dangerous mountain walls in Italy, the Dolomites. We are quickly introduced to a group of friends who arrive at the place where they are staying, Joshua (Ben Lamb), Reynolds (Nathan Welsh), Nathan (Louis Boyer) and Taylor (David Wayman) who together form one of the big problems of this film, warning us from the moment they appear on screen. Presenting characters that are empty shells makes no sense in filmmaking because what viewer would be interested? Each one feels completely inorganic and devoid of personality, not to mention that the dynamics between the groups of friends lack fluidity from both ends.

From the approach given by screenwriter, who is Tom Boyle it was very evident that Joshua was the main antagonist within the group since he was the one dictating what was going to be done and aggressively keeping all the power in his domain, taking advantage of the fact that his friends are complete numbskulls without enough willpower to stop him? I'll give them some credit because he comes across as a complete lunatic, but even in that the cinematography fails to develop him in a way that makes his behavior more impactful and not just awkward. The behavior of this character could have been appropriately fit into a sociopathic person and although this requires a better overall development at least it would have been better.

Sophie's death was announced with fireworks since she met Joshua because seconds later they let us see that this man was not a normal person, I want to firmly believe that hiding it was never one of the objectives because if so the failure would be greater, but as it did not last too long, I will not take into account its development as a character. So we're left with Kelly being one of the worst protagonists I've seen, completely wasting the potential to show a strong and capable woman as the expert climber she is, at least there was a chance to give her spark right? I mean, you have a woman climbing a wall with no equipment because she has to escape from a group of men who murdered her friend, some dialogue between her and the main antagonist that wasn't empty would be appreciated.

It should be noted that, in itself, dialogue was lacking because Kelly did not speak in most of this film, how do you generate empathy without showing a better development of the events that occur in front of the viewer?

You have a plot that by its characteristics is going to determine by obligation what kind of confrontations you can use when evidently there is a necessary distance between these characters shown, if they are in a race climbing the wall of a mountain, physical confrontations are sacrificed for the most part and what should take center stage would be psychological confrontations, with Kelly's personal problems so that there are conflict generators that endanger her climbing, which did exist in relation to her deceased fiancé because he actually died climbing in that place, it is shown as a reminder for us to realize that in this cinematography having common sense is overrated? who would think of descending without security to grab an engagement ring because you accidentally dropped it?

In the aesthetic section, it doesn't make sense, although those beautiful panoramic scenes are appreciated, but in general I consider that those constant drastic changes in the lighting of the environment don't help in creating an enveloping sensation and it simply feels out of place within the genre it pretends to be, that although the color palettes according to the genre of cinematography are a bit cliché, it does feel out of place, without a pleasant harmony to the eye, nor a progression that makes sense in how the time is supposed to pass? at one point it's a scene in darkness and during a short chase it magically becomes daylight conveniently enough for Kelly to start climbing the mountain wall. Needless to say, it doesn't look good.

This is not a film that I enjoyed, I would say that I would not even recommend it to pass the time because this production simply leaves a bad taste in my mouth for its mediocrity, it was a great disappointment since I did not think that at this point with the existing technological advances and so many opportunities to obtain an acceptable final result they have decided to do this. A plot that could have been taken advantage of ended up being affected by a lousy script and null development of the characters that give life to it, regular interpretations that match with what the film turned out to be, I would not reproach them anything because when you have a character without development what can you do? I would tell them to save themselves the bad time, if they are bored the cinematographic world has better productions.

Thank you very much for reading my publication, I hope to meet you here in the next opportunity.