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(Review) FALL 2: DEADPOINT: Bigger Heights, Fewer Surprises

By. Radek Velicka 

 

Republished with permission. Originally published HERE

 

The sequel trades the tower for Thailand’s cliffs and once again turns fear of heights into its strongest weapon.

The first Fall, released in 2022, was a perfect example of a film built around one simple idea. Two women climb an abandoned television tower in the middle of nowhere, their way back down disappears, and the next hour and a half is essentially about finding increasingly unpleasant ways to make their situation worse. Nothing complicated, very few characters, almost no space to move, and one universal fear: heights. Made for roughly $3 million, the film ultimately grossed more than $21 million worldwide and found an even larger audience on streaming, making a sequel almost inevitable.

Story-wise, however, things were not quite so simple. The first film worked as a self-contained survival thriller, and one of its two protagonists, Hunter (Virginia Gardner), did not survive. Screenwriters Scott Mann and Jonathan Frank therefore built the sequel around her younger sister Jax (Harriet Slater), who is still struggling to come to terms with her death.

When Luce (Arsema Thomas), one of Hunter’s old friends, suddenly enters her life, the two discover an unfinished list of adventures Hunter wanted to complete. And because the best way to process your sister’s death while extreme climbing is apparently to go extreme climbing yourself, they travel to Thailand to tackle a dangerous plank walk on Mount Kwan. It does not take long before part of the route collapses, the way back becomes virtually impossible, and FALL can once again start doing exactly what we came to see.

 

Bigger Movie, Fewer Surprises

FALL 2: DEADPOINT directly continues the story of the first film, with Hunter returning several times through flashbacks. Becky, once again played by Grace Caroline Currey, also makes an appearance, and the filmmakers are clearly trying to turn what began as a very simple survival thriller into a small ongoing franchise. The more Fall tries to become a story-driven series, however, the more obvious it becomes that writing was never its greatest strength.

The characters are likable, and Harriet Slater and Arsema Thomas play them well enough that spending ninety minutes in their company is never a problem. Their arcs, however, are laid out so clearly that an experienced viewer can usually predict not only what will come back later, but roughly when it will happen.

If drugs appear early in the film, you can safely assume they will matter again. If one character is afraid of almost everything, it is hardly a surprise that she will eventually discover her inner badass. And when a new friend arrives about whom we suspiciously know very little, it would almost be more surprising if she did not have a secret.

The film presents several such revelations as major twists, yet the biggest surprise is often simply that it does exactly what you expected it to do.

 

 

A Mountaineer Could Ask Questions. But Why Ruin the Fun?

While the sequel is even more transparent than its predecessor on a screenplay level, visually it moves in the opposite direction. The first film was almost perfectly contained. This time, the characters first head through the jungle and then onto vast rock faces. The result feels considerably more epic, and the spectacular scenery was easily one of the film’s biggest strengths for me.

The plank walk itself is not entirely a screenwriter’s invention either. Directors Peter and Michael Spierig took inspiration from the real Huashan Plank Walk in China. For filming, they used a quarry in Thailand, where the actresses were suspended in harnesses roughly forty feet above the ground. According to the filmmakers, they wanted to minimize the use of blue screen so that the real rock, sun, heat and physical strain could help sell the illusion of far greater heights.

As someone for whom hiking and scrambling are a regular part of life, I could of course start picking the film apart almost immediately. Why does an experienced mountain guide taking them onto a route like this not give them helmets, one of the most basic pieces of equipment? Why would someone make that particular decision? Could anyone really survive that? And would a person actually keep going after an injury like this?

But once you start playing that game, you might as well pause the film every five minutes. FALL 2 is not an instructional video about moving safely through exposed mountain terrain. It is a mountain roller coaster, and the far more important question is whether it can make you forget those absurdities for a while. For me, the answer is yes.

 

 

Just Look Down

Scrambling may be part of my everyday life, but a vertical drop is still a vertical drop. When the camera peers over the edge and the rock suddenly disappears beneath someone’s feet, my heart can still relocate somewhere around my stomach. The Spierig brothers also make frequent use of subjective camera angles and cameras mounted close to the actors, which intensifies that feeling of exposure even further.

The younger audience at my screening reacted exactly when the film wanted them to. You can pick apart the probability of individual situations, the holes in the screenplay or the twists you can see coming from a mile away, but if FALL 2 is primarily meant to be a ninety-minute thrill ride for people who want that uncomfortable feeling in their stomach whenever someone looks down, it accomplishes its basic goal.

And that is probably why reactions to films like this will always be divided. If you expect a survival thriller to offer carefully considered character decisions, airtight logic and a screenplay capable of outsmarting you, FALL 2 gives you plenty of reasons to dismiss it. But if you are willing to accept its rules and spend ninety minutes strapped into an imaginary mountain roller coaster without a safety rail, it can still be deeply uncomfortable in exactly the right way.

 

 

Higher, Yes. Further, Not Quite

The first Fall had one major advantage that its sequel can never reproduce: simplicity and the element of surprise. Nobody expected much from it, and its absurdly straightforward concept turned out to be an ideal foundation for a small survival thriller.

The sequel is bigger, broader and visually more impressive. At the same time, however, it adds exactly the things the first film did not need (more story, more secrets, more twists) without managing to make any of them genuinely surprising.

Still, I would not write it off completely. The characters work, the actresses are likable, the Thai locations look gorgeous, and most importantly, the high-altitude sequences still do exactly what they are supposed to do. Whenever the film stops trying to be clever and simply hangs someone above a massive drop, it becomes very easy to understand why the first movie got a sequel.

FALL 2: DEADPOINT does not surpass its predecessor, nor can it surprise audiences with the same simple concept again. But as another ninety-minute ride for viewers who want to squirm nervously in their seats, it does the job. And sometimes it is better simply not to ask where the helmets are.