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Summer 2022 was a strange time. Restaurants and bars were no longer checking for proof of vaccination, and masks in public spaces were (mostly) optional. I had just finished grad school and found myself with a lot of time on my hands, which I spent applying for jobs and watching movies while waiting for responses. Because of the pandemic, most of these movies had been shuffled off to streaming and VOD. But others, like Scott Mann’s Fall, which premiered in August 2022, were being positioned as the kind of theatrical experience worth leaving the house for.
The psychological survival thriller delivered on its promise – it made $21.8 million on a $3 million budget– but with a story this bonkers, how could it not? Thrill seeker Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) and her best friend, up-and-coming YouTuber Shiloh Hunter (Virginia Gardner), climb an abandoned 2,000-foot TV tower in the middle of the Mojave Desert in an effort to find closure after the death of Becky’s husband, Dan (Mason Gooding), during one of their excursions a year prior. As Murphy’s Law suggests, anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and the girls are stranded on the tower, dehydrated with dwindling supplies and zero cell service. Becky lives and Shiloh dies while trying to retrieve their backpack.
Four years later, it’s hardly surprising that Fall has received the sequel treatment. What is surprising, though, is how little Fall 2: Deadpoint seems to understand about what made its predecessor work in the first place, even if it hits some familiar beats.
Written by Mann and Fall co-writer Jonathan Frank and directed by the Spierig Brothers (Jigsaw, Winchester), Fall 2: Deadpoint introduces us to Jax (Harriet Slater), Shiloh’s timid little sister who has been thrust into the spotlight now that Shiloh has been turned into a martyr of sorts amongst true crime fans and other thrill seekers (her “fall-owers”). While selling the last of her belongings, Jax meets Shiloh’s college friend, Luce (Arsema Thomas), who suggests over a glass of “Jim Dandie’s” that they should honor her legacy by going on an illegal plank-walk on the side of a mountain in Thailand that will lead them to a spiritual, fear-eating statue the locals call the Death Dragon.
Jax might be shy and risk-averse (She’s shielding herself from the cameras! She has a Nokia brick phone!), but it doesn’t seem to take much for her to agree to go on this trip with a complete and total stranger. In what seems like a matter of days, the pair find themselves in Thailand, using the code Shiloh conveniently left in her scrapbook (the “Fuck-It” list) to hire an obviously sleazy man named John (Tom Brittney) to guide them 4,000 feet up an abandoned ladder and across the mountain.
I’m sure you can guess what follows: the planks are destroyed by an earthquake/rockslide combo, the backpack is hanging from a beam a few feet away, and the girls must confront grief, regret, lies, and fear while dangling thousands of feet from the ground with no help in sight. There’s also one (1) vulture, a hallucination of a dead body, and plenty of shots of shaking beams, rusty bars, and loose screws to remind you that this is, indeed, a Fall movie, in case you somehow forgot in between the many, many flashbacks of Shiloh pretending to pass out while skydiving in order to (checks notes) teach Jax about the importance of standing up for her herself, among other motivational platitudes.
Cinematographer Andrew Strahorn does some amazing work here, delivering some vertigo-inducing shots of the view from the mountain and truly tense moments as John and the girls cross the loose, creaky planks. But where the movie really succeeds is in the performances from Slater and Thomas, who are doing an impressive amount with a script that is, at best, soapy and, at worst, aggressively predictable and expository. I won’t delve into spoilers here, but one of the characters is hiding two secrets, and even if I did roll my eyes at the first, the second genuinely took me by surprise, even if it didn’t really go anywhere.
This is, ultimately, what made Fall 2: Deadpoint such an exhausting watch despite its 97-minute runtime. At times, I felt like I was watching Final Destination but without any of the nastiness or ingenuity. Yes, there are a handful of suspenseful sequences, but the film’s relentless predictability makes much of the experience feel like waiting for the characters to make it to the next thing and the next thing before one (or both) of them inevitably dies. I got the sense that the film wanted to say something about bravery and the brevity of life, but its message never quite landed with the emotional weight it was clearly reaching for.
Fall 2: Deadpoint pulls from the Marvel playbook in its final moments, teasing yet another installment in what seems to be a ski resort or snowy mountain. I may not have enjoyed the journey this time around, but I have to admit that I do want to know where the franchise is going to send two girls to be stranded next. YOLO, I guess.
Summary
‘Fall 2: Deadpoint’ has vertigo-induing visuals and committed performances, but its predictable story and lack of thrills make for an exhausting 97 minutes.
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