Synopsis:After her sister Shiloh’s death, Jax Hunter is talked into a tribute climb by Shiloh’s friend Luce. The two travel to Thailand for a plank walk on Mount Kwan, where a rockslide strands them thousands of feet up with no route down and no help coming.
Stars: Harriet Slater, Arsema Thomas, Tom Brittney
Director: Peter Spierig and Michael Spierig
Rated: PG-13 (strong language, some violent content/bloody images and drug material)
Running Length: 97 minutes
Movie Review in Brief: A sequel that takes a solid, unremarkable original and improves on it, with better storytelling and two leads worth worrying about. The green screen work is rough, and I still squirmed for most of it. 
Fall 2: Deadpoint Review: A Sequel That Actually Improves
Well, well, well. What do we have here.
A sequel that takes a solid, unremarkable original and makes it better, while setting up a third chapter that’s already been announced. That last part isn’t a spoiler. Lionsgate greenlit two follow-ups in October 2023, with plans at the time to shoot them back-to-back. Original screenwriter Scott Mann would write and direct the third himself. This is the middle chapter of a planned trilogy, not a cheap cash-in, and while the third film wound up not being filmed after the second, it’s still very much in the works.
I was dubious about a sequel to 2022’s Fall to begin with. That film was a $3 million exercise in vertigo that found its real audience later, on streaming, through word of mouth. Then I heard the Spierig brothers were involved and got interested. The directors of Daybreakers and Predestination have a feel for style and structure, and they know when to trust their instincts.
So I’m happy to report that Fall 2: Deadpoint is a step up.
A Tribute, a Plank Walk, and a Rockslide
How it gets you up there matters more this time, so here’s the setup.
The first film cost Shiloh Hunter her life. This one opens in that aftermath. Jax Hunter (Harriet Slater, Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin) is Shiloh’s older sister. Then Luce (Arsema Thomas, Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story) turns up, a friend of Shiloh’s with considerably more nerve than sense.
Luce proposes a tribute. To finish the kind of climb Shiloh would have loved, and do it properly. That takes them to Thailand and a plank walk on Mount Kwan, a route bolted onto the side of a cliff. A local guide named John comes along to keep them honest. Then a rockslide takes out the way down and separates them from John. The two of them are stranded thousands of feet up with no route, no guide and nobody coming.
It’s a better engine than the first film had. Fall stranded two friends on a radio tower more or less by accident. This one puts two women on a mountain because one of them is grieving and the other believes grief is something you climb out of. They don’t know one another that well, having met mere days before they depart (must be nice to just, y’know, buy a ticket to Thailand at the drop of a hat.). They have to trust each other anyway. That’s a story, not just a predicament.
Two Leads Worth Worrying About
Both women give you a reason to care what happens next, and that matters more than it sounds. In this genre the temptation is to treat people as delivery devices for the drop. The screenplay resists that, giving each of them enough weight that the danger reads as consequence rather than spectacle.
Neither actress is playing this like a stepping stone. What the first film had going for it, past the gimmick, was belief. You accepted that two people could get into a spot that stupid out of love and grief. This one keeps that, and adds the friction of two women stuck with each other by circumstance rather than choice.
Tom Brittney rounds out the small cast. The script also pulls off several turns I didn’t see coming. That keeps you on your toes, so to speak, more than a film like this usually manages.
I should admit my bias. I’m afraid of heights, or more to say, I have developed a fear of heights over time. So I spent a good chunk of this squirming and holding my breath in exactly the places the filmmakers wanted me to. If that’s you too, you already know whether you’re buying a ticket.
The Craft, and One Real Problem
Andrew Strahorn shot this on location in Thailand, wrapping by September 2025. Tim Despic created the spiky score and Jacinta Leong is responsible for the production design. Tommy Aagaard and Scott Gray have edited the thrills to be razor sharp. The camera work keeps finding new ways to make you aware of open air below a person. On a film like this, that is the one job to get right.
Now the problem. Nearly everything here involves green screen of some kind, and too often the seams show. I don’t want two actresses actually dangling off a mountain in Thailand, so I’m not asking for that. But there are stretches where the backgrounds look flat and dated, closer to a Windows 95 desktop than a photo-real abyss. In a movie whose only real weapon is the convincing illusion of height, that hurts.
Initially, the subtitle didn’t make a lick of sense to me, but in writing this review I discovered that in climbing a deadpoint is “a controlled, dynamic movement where you reach for a hold at the exact moment your body’s upward momentum pauses.” Perhaps they should have defined that better within the film?
Vertigo for the Vertical Era, and Where to Sit
There’s something well-timed about this arriving now. Height-centric survival horror is a small, effective subgenre. It’s landing at the exact moment when vertical video has trained every eye to read a tall, narrow frame as normal. The Spierigs use that comfort against you. The vertigo hits harder because the shape of the image feels familiar before the drop registers.
So catch this one in a theater. I’d go further and sit as close to the screen as you can stand. The frame fills your peripheral vision and the sound wraps all the way around. The effects will bother you less from there, and the drops will bother you considerably more.
One more thing worth saying. The first Fall worked because it never cheated on its own rules, and the sequel keeps that discipline. Nobody discovers a convenient ledge. Nobody gets rescued by a plot device. Every solution costs something, and most of them cost more than the characters expect.
How all of this leads into a third chapter is yours to discover. Just don’t look down.
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