Released in 2022, “Fall” told the story of two thrill-seeking friends, Shiloh (Virginia Gardner) and Becky (Grace Caroline Currey), who impulsively decide to climb to the top of a rusted-out television broadcasting tower in the desert in order to scatter the ashes of Shiloh’s husband, who died during a mountain climbing expedition a year earlier. Needless to say, things go higgledy-piggledy when a piece of the ladder breaks, and they find themselves trapped hundreds of feet above the ground with few supplies, no way to communicate with anyone, and vultures already beginning to circle. Although made with a certain amount of style, it’s hard to sympathize with the plight of characters who seem to go out of their way to place themselves in danger.
Although hardly a blockbuster during its theatrical run, its streaming popularity and low production cost made a sequel pretty much inevitable, albeit conceptually baffling from a narrative standpoint. After all, the original left Shiloh dead and Becky presumably wised up enough to keep her feet planted firmly on the ground. To get around this in “Fall 2: Deadpoint,” returning screenwriters Jonathan Frank and Scott Mann have made the bold decision to essentially repeat the first film, albeit with a new locale, somewhat different characters, and more plot twists to play out amongst the scenes of said characters dangling over precipices. The hope, it seems, is to distract viewers from shaking their heads and thinking, “serves them right.”
The knuckleheads this time are two people that the late Shiloh left behind—estranged sister Jax (Harriet Slater), who has unresolved fear issues, and best friend and fellow daredevil Luce (Arsema Thomas). After finding Shiloh’s diary charting all of the adventures she had accomplished and plans for future treks, Luce thinks that the two of them (who have just met, mind you) should perform the next one on her list as a tribute—a journey to Thailand to climb several thousand feet in the air up a mountain and walk around the side via a series of rickety planks. (Although the one depicted here is entirely fictional, there is apparently a similar plank walk in Huashan, China that is said to be the most dangerous hike in the world.)
You would think that both Shiloh and her husband having plunged to their deaths from high altitudes during risky, entirely avoidable misadventures might have shied Jax away from such things. But she agrees to this, and the two are off, only to discover that it is the wrong season for such treks as the rains make the planks particularly treacherous.
Lucky for Jax and Luce, they find a mildly hunky tour guide (Tom Brittney) who is willing to take them on the trek, and they’re off. Before long, the trio is hit with a rockslide that smashes most of the planks and leaves Jax and Luce trapped thousands of feet in the air with nowhere to go. Together, they’re forced to put their shared grief to the side in order to figure out a way to survive amidst the bad weather, collapsing planks, and rusty chunks of metal just right for piercing flesh. To break up the monotony, we are occasionally treated to our old narrative friend, the Gradually Expanding Flashback, in which Jax thinks back to her last encounter with Shiloh and her unfortunate choice of parting words.
Like its predecessor, “Fall 2: Deadpoint” is the cinematic equivalent of an amusement park thrill ride—the kind of film in which one is sometimes willing to overlook plausibility issues if the thrills are sufficiently thrilling. The problem here is that the thrills a.) take way too long to finally kick into gear, b.) are not particularly thrilling once they start, and c.) just become repetitive after a while. Perhaps realizing this, Frank & Mann tried to make up for it by throwing in two loopy plot twists this time around, but they end up straining credulity, even by the standards of paint-by-numbers sequels to gimmicky movies. The two leads do as best they can but can’t make much of a script that requires them to act like idiots to get from one plot point to another. Roughly 47% of their dialogue consists of some variation of “You got this!” “I’ve got this!” or “Don’t let go!”
The only surprising thing about “Fall 2: Deadpoint” is that it was directed by Michael & Peter Spierig, a fraternal filmmaking duo who have done some interesting things in the past, such as the offbeat futuristic vampire saga “Daybreakers” and the twisty time-travel paradox thriller “Predestination.” Their work here is slick enough technically, but ultimately leans more toward tedium than tension; I felt boredom instead of unease. The lone scary moment comes at the very end with the suggestion that, flying in the face of all common sense, a third “Fall” film is apparently on the horizon. If this does come to pass, I can only hope that they subtitle it “Refalling.”
