FALL 2: DEADPOINT (2026)

Studio:   Lionsgate
Director: The Spierig Brothers
Writer:   Jonathan Frank, Scott Mann
Producer: James Harris, Mark Lane, Scott Mann, David Haring, Christian Mercuri
Stars:    Harriet Slater, Arsema Thomas, Tom Brittney, Virginia Gardner

Review Score:

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Summary:

To honor her daredevil sister who died, a young woman joins her sister’s friend for a perilous mountain climb in Thailand.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

500 miles south of Bangkok, a drug smuggler holds another man at gunpoint, forcing him to ascend the sheer cliff face of Mount Kwan by traversing a perilous pathway made from old wooden planks. A sudden earthquake causes a section of support chains bolted into the rock to collapse. The men fall to their deaths.

In the wake of her daredevil sister Shiloh Hunter becoming an even bigger social media celebrity after dying atop the B67 TV tower, Shiloh’s younger sister Jax Hunter gifts a box of her sister’s belongings to Shiloh’s friend Luce. Thinking back on a tandem skydive that ended with Jax cursing out Shiloh for pressuring her to participate, Jax openly mourns her sister. Luce suggests seeking closure by completing the next milestone in Shiloh’s journal of daring climbs she wished to make.

Despite the climb being closed to tourists due to safety issues, and the danger posed by local law enforcement searching for drug runners, Luce convinces Jax to join her for the Mount Kwan plank walk, which culminates in reaching a dragon statue said to eat a person’s fears. At a bar beneath the mountain, Jax and Luce inquire about hiring a guide for “Deth Dragon Trail,” but the bartender tells them the path is off limits because of hazardous earthquakes. Using a password written in Shiloh’s journal, the women order an “Icarus on the Rocks,” which grants them access to a secret backroom. In the backroom, Jax and Shiloh meet American trail guide Jon Platt, and they ultimately negotiate a price to hire him for the illegal climb.

Partway through the treacherous plank walk, Jax, Luce, and Jon reach the section collapsed by the rockslide that killed the two Thai climbers earlier. Jon points out that they’ll have to disengage their safety ropes to pass since the support chains no longer exist. Feeling faint, Jax flashes back to passing out during her skydive with Shiloh. Jon helps Jax recover by having her use a handheld oxygen cannister.

During a rainstorm, an earthquake causes another section of the narrow walkway to collapse. Jon disappears in the commotion. Luce convinces Jax that they must go back the way they came.

Another rockslide breaks off another portion of planking and pulls down Jax by her safety restraint. Luce rescues Jax, but the two women become stranded on an outcropping known as Devil’s Elbow with no way to proceed in either direction.

Having recovered from being knocked unconscious during the storm, Jon unexpectedly tries contacting the women over a radio in Jax’s backpack, which is stuck hanging on a hard-to-reach metal bar jutting out from the rock wall. Luce daringly tries to retrieve the backpack, but she is ultimately unable to do so.

Using a powerful laser pointer Luce took from Jon, the women try signaling the distant bar below the mountain. After a rude billiards player complains about the distraction, the bartender merely closes the blinds in response to the light.

While Luce sleeps, Jax uses the camcorder she brought with her to watch old videos of her sister. The videos reveal that Shiloh’s friend Luce is actually a completely different person than the woman currently with Jax.

When Luce wakes, Jax confronts her about her identity. Later, Luce reveals her real name is Billie. Billie apologetically confesses she was a fan of Jax’s sister because Shiloh’s videos inspired her to be more proactive about her own life. Billie wanted to buy Shiloh’s vehicle to feel more connected to her, but because she knew Jax was opposed to social media followers obtaining Shiloh’s things, Billie impersonated Luce instead.

In the morning, Billie tries making amends with another attempt to retrieve the dangling backpack. Billie ends up impaling her arm on exposed metal. Jax risks her life to rescue Billie.

Billie shows Jax an emotional text message she prepared to send to her mother. The message is part of a revelation that Billie has terminal cancer. She stopped treatment but has been unable to tell her parents about her impending death. The climb was meant to make her feel vibrant again. Jax motivates Billie to stay alive so she can tell her mother the truth in person.

Jax flashes back to skydiving with her sister. Upset that they nearly died due to her momentary blackout, Jax blames Shiloh for pressuring her into the jump. Shiloh tells her sister she only wanted Jax to learn to stand up for herself and be less afraid.

The next morning, Jax acrobatically retrieves the backpack. The women radio Jon, who is able to find their location and pull them up to the mountain’s peak. There, they reach the fabled dragon statue. No longer fearful, Jax pays respects to her sister and decides to proceed without engaging her safety rope.

For the final crossing, each person walks one at a time over an old bridge of ropes and planks with missing handholds high above a gorge. Everyone narrowly makes it across the unstable bridge.

Reaching for an oxygen cannister from Jon’s backpack, Billie discovers the cannisters contain bags of fentanyl, revealing she and Jax were unwittingly used as drug mules in a smuggling operation. Angry, Billie dumps her cannister of fentanyl over the cliff. Instinctively, Jon retaliates by pushing Billie to her death. Immediately regretful, Jon tries convincing Jax to participate in a coverup, which she refuses.

Jax momentarily stops Jon from coming toward her by threatening to also dump her cannister of fentanyl. A physical struggle ensues during which Jon repeatedly punches and chokes Jax.

Jax bites Jon to get away from him. She then crawls partway across the rope bridge and feigns passing out to lure Jon toward her and the second cannister. When Jon gets close enough, Jax reveals her ruse by quickly affixing her safety harness and releasing a rope restraint on the bridge, causing the bridge to break apart. Jon falls to his death while Jax remains safe.

A helicopter rescues Jax, who returns to the bar beneath the mountain. Bloody but resolute, Jax drinks two shots of whiskey in Billie’s honor. She then sends Billie’s previously written text message to Billie’s mother.

Checking the next entry in her sister’s journal, Jax finds a Polaroid of Shiloh’s friend Becky, who was with Shiloh when she died, on a page mapping a plan to climb Hell’s Chasm. Shortly thereafter, Becky receives a card in the mail inviting her on the next adventure in Shiloh’s memory.

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Review:

The surprise success of the first “Fall” film caught a lot of people off guard, including its makers. Depending on which numbers one goes by, the indie thriller grossed somewhere between five and seven times its relatively low production budget when it released worldwide in 2022. A couple of months later, “Fall” became an unexpected hit on Netflix too, prompting plans to turn an improbable premise about two daredevil friends stranded atop a TV tower (a premise that could only ever fly in a popcorn B-movie, by the way) into an entire series by putting two sequels into simultaneous development.

Although its budget and box office came out to amounts on par with the original, word of mouth wasn’t as strong, and not as sustained, for “Fall 2: Deadpoint.” The Rotten Tomatoes rating dropped about 30 points from “Fall’s” more favorable reviews. Less than five weeks separated the sequel’s theatrical release from its digital debut. Audiences may have enjoyed feeling the drop once, but apparently their stomachs hadn’t returned in time for there to be higher interest in taking the perilous plunge a second time, or in keeping the sequel blinking brightly on pop culture’s radar.

Even though it sticks to an identical formula, “Fall 2: Deadpoint” can’t be accused of not putting its best possible foot forward. Jonathan Frank and Scott Mann return as writers. Scott Mann doesn’t direct this time around, but the Spierig Brothers, who previously helmed “Predestination” (review here) and “Jigsaw” (review here) among other genre titles, are at least a lateral move if not an upgrade in that department. Producers could have cut corners by treating “Fall 2” like a made-for-streaming thriller from the beginning, yet they chose to keep a certain standard of quality.

Rather than putting the first film’s sole survivor, Becky, in direct danger again, this story follows up on earlier events after switching to a new character, Jax. It was her older sister, Shiloh, who died in “Fall” (review here). Unlike Shiloh, Jax is a scaredy cat, frequently flashing back to a frightening skydiving incident that left Jax cursing out Shiloh and Shiloh futilely encouraging Jax to be more fearless.

Shiloh gets her wish, albeit posthumously, when her friend Luce convinces Jax to defy death by taking a harrowing plank walk up a sheer mountain face in Thailand. Earthquakes, rusted support lines, and rotted wooden pathways have long since made the trail unsafe and off-limits. Getting a guide to help make the illegal climb won’t be easy. Luckily, Jax and Luce have Shiloh’s old journal of adrenaline-fueled adventures she wished to make, which conveniently contains a secret password.

In an amusingly familiar scene that instantly reminds viewers to take “Fall 2” as escapist fantasy instead of documentarian reality, the women order an “Icarus on the Rocks,” which grants them access to a hidden backroom that may or may not exist in real Thailand bars, but definitely exists in filmed fiction. The camera slinks toward a hunching man from behind. When Jax and Luce repeat their mysterious drink order, grim-faced locals exit like the room is about to explode. Apparently, this man has been sitting there smoking cigarettes and slugging booze until someone finally said the magic words.

This man, Jon, is a knowledgeable climber who agrees to take Jax and Luce on their trek once they pay his steep fee. Then it’s off to Mount Kwan for shot after shot of metal pieces creaking, fraying ropes straining, and buckling chains pulling dust plumes out of breaking rocks until definitive disaster eventually strikes the trio.

“Fall 2” can’t fully recreate the same nail-biting atmosphere as “Fall” partly because, instead of open sky giving a greater sense of scale, Jax and Luce are positioned against a flat wall for most of the movie. It feels like the actors are safe on a set, because they are. The actors were safe last time too, except the environment they were in offered more opportunities for viewers to empathetically experience vertigo with more nausea-inducing views.

There’s still some suspense to be found in scenes such as Jax and Luce struggling to retrieve an essential backpack hanging precariously on a post that’s just the right amount of out-of-reach. But between when they first drop it and when they finally recover it, the movie burns 30 minutes on three separate attempts to get the bag. Other events happen during this stretch. Still, there’s no escaping the notion that the movie isn’t quite sure how to keep two stranded people occupied on a small ledge in order for the runtime to hit feature length.

In the meantime, there are also only so many insert shots of failing restraints and bursting bolts a movie can show before foreshadowing passes the peak of tension and falls into the gorge of redundancy. Distracted imaginations are more likely to spend that span wondering who in the world built this treacherous trail of narrow planks and chains in an area prone to rockslides, how, and why? Especially at the peak where the characters encounter a “Temple of Doom” rope bridge that doesn’t even have any remaining handholds.

“Fall” famously, or infamously depending on one’s reaction to the revelation, featured a twist. “Deadpoint” tops that by having two. The first one is comparatively minor, having to do with a small secret up someone’s sleeve. The second one is bigger, and utterly laughable when considering the risk-to-reward ratio involved in the monumental undertaking to accomplish a specific task when infinitely easier options exist. This is Jigsaw levels of contrived overplanning, and it definitely doesn’t hold up to post-viewing scrutiny regarding how everything comes together.

“Fall” perhaps lucked out by drawing from a well with more juice in it than anyone originally anticipated. With fewer palpable thrills and a déjà vu setup that’s harder to swallow a second time, “Fall 2: Deadpoint” might be a case of draining that well dry. A third installment reportedly remains in the works, but it’ll have to come up with more significant stakes than this sequel to avoid dropping its bucket down a completely empty hole.

Review Score: 55

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