The Ledge (2022) – Bad man bad

You know how sometimes there are bad films and there are good films?  Well… ‘The Ledge’ just doesn’t fall into either category, instead simply ending up at exactly the midway point between the two.  There’s nothing terribly awful about it (for what it is), but there’s not an awful lot about it that makes it stand out.

Two young women go climbing in the wilderness as a bit of an ‘adventure holiday,’ only for one of them to end up being murdered by a gang of four men.  The surviving woman catches the crime on camera and a chase ensues – a long chase.

Nothing wrong with the premise.  It’s nice and simple. ‘Final girl’ practically starts off the film as the ‘final girl’ and has to evade her pursuers for the movie’s runtime.  But what got me was the antagonists – mainly one of them.  He’s bad, you see?  He’s bad because he does bad things – always.  And he speaks about bad things – always.  He does bad things to – presumably – everyone he meets.  He’s bad.  Do you get the impression this is a bad man?  He’s so bad it starts to cross the line into parody when every line that comes out of his mouth is like something a pantomime villain would say.  The other three guys are comprised of one who does question what they’re doing (so he kind of stands out) and the other two are just generic henchmen-types who you won’t even remember.

Despite its acceptable enough plot and performance from the lead, it’s a bit slow.  Yes, I know it’s not supposed to be a ‘high-octane’ thrill ride and those who get the most out of it will be the ones in the mood for more of a ‘slow burner.’ But the film is effectively one long cliff climb.  And, seeing as physics dictate that you can hardly speed up giant vertical heights, everything progresses about as fast as the ‘chase’ from ‘The Last Jedi.’ Talking of ‘Star Wars,’ whenever our protagonist has to make a particularly tricky grip, you almost get an Obi-wan Kenobi moment where you hear her former instructor tell her to ‘Use the Force!’ Or something like that.

For all its faults, it’s perfectly watchable.  I figured a fair proportion of it would be filmed on a soundstage, but, if it was, I found it hard to make out.  The locations were made the best of and the overall look of the film was professionally done.  It’s not the worst film you’ll ever see, but there are definitely better.  I know I watched a film about climbers being pursued by killers set in Scotland about fifteen years ago.  I wish I could remember what it was called. It was good though – better than this, sadly.

5/10 You can watch this film while you're doing the ironing (you'll still get the general gist of it)