Acrophobie

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')

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.

Don't Look Down starts off with two sisters being photographed on the edge of a huge drop. You know what will happen next, and the same can be said for the rest of the film.

Some parts were eerie when you felt if might have a supernatural cause to it but the big finale was a complete cop out. A Saturday evening "thriller" in the vein of Murder She Wrote disguised as a Wes Craven horror film. Don't be fooled. I was bored throughout most of it and even a little bit angry at the end.

The guy from Beverly Hills 90210 is in this for crying out loud.

This is a terrible film which makes you wish the entire production team had fallen off that cliff.

A professional woman (played well by Megan Ward) is haunted by shocking visions when her younger sister is tragically killed by falling from a cliff. For people like me who suffer from acrophobia (a fear of heights) the tense opening scene (and others during the movie) will induce sweaty palms, I found it genuinely scary. Hitchcock's far superior Vertigo sprang to mind a few times. Released as Wes Craven Presents Don't Look Down, this really is NOT a Craven movie. My VHS copy comes with the ridiculous quote "This is the best Wes Craven movie that I have ever seen" on the cover. Sure, there are some Craven touches here and there, but he served as one of several producers. This is a horror/thriller that has some good qualities but has made for TV written all over it. BBFC rated 12 here in the UK, low on adult themes but still manages to pack a scare or two. Worth seeing.

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-.