Schau nie nach unten! Die Angst am Abgrund

When I first started watching this film, I thought "oh no, not another low budget, waste of time", but actually I changed my mind after about ten minutes. It was a good story (although very predictable), but one that you have to watch right till the end, just to confirm what you have already figured out. However, I do have to say that although I predicted everything about this film, much to my dad and sisters' annoyance, I thought the ending was good.

When I sat down to watch this, I didn't know too much about it; what I knew was that Wes Craven was one of the producers, and that it was a made-for-TV movie. When it started, I quickly discovered that two things; one, it was one of those mystery thrillers, where you're supposed to guess who the killer is, and two, it's mainly made to scare those who suffer from acrophobia, fear of heights(hence the title). For a TV movie, the production is surprisingly good, and the film does contain a few intense scenes. Since I suffer from a mild case of acrophobia myself, I found plenty of scenes to be scary and intense(not to say that people who couldn't care less about heights won't find them so too, though). The plot is surprisingly good, and does hold water to some extent; I wouldn't call it great, but it's not really that far-fetched. The acting is decent, no going around that. All of the actors are unknowns, which could be(and probably is) why, but it could also be the direction, which, admittedly isn't great(but hey, this guy's only done series and half-bad movies before, so what do you expect?). The characters are well-written, and mostly avoid being overly cliché-like; apart from the lead, none of them seemed like stereotypes. The special effects were OK, not better nor worse than the standard for TV movies. Considering the production values, I was surprised by how much the film actually did manage to shock and frighten me. The mystery was very good; it kept me guessing throughout the film, and when the answer was revealed, I was very surprised. I thought I had considered every possible outcome, but the film still managed to surprise me with the twist. I'm not sure what to draw as a conclusion from that; maybe the films plot is actually good, but just surrounded by mediocrity in the acting, writing and to a certain extent, theme, which drags the film down to just being decent overall... or maybe I'm just easily manipulated. Who knows. All in all, a decent mystery thriller. I recommend it exclusively to big fans of mystery films and people who suffer from acrophobia; since both apply to me, I really enjoyed it. Pretty much everyone else should just skip this one. 5/10

This wasn't exactly what I had expected from a Wes Craven movie, it wasn't entirely bad, but it certainly won't be a movie I'll remember in a month, possibly not even next week - it has a predictable villain and a paper thin story. The worst aspect of the movie was probably the way the antagonist revealed his 'dastardly' plan at the end, no surprises here. My rating: 2/10

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.

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.