Joel on Film

Right off the bat, the filmmakers seem to understand that they can’t play the same trick with Fall: Deadpoint as they played on us in the first film. That was Fall, obviously, the acrophobia-inducing potboiler from 2022, in which a couple of girlfriends found themselves atop a radio tower for a few days and desperate for a way to descend it. It had a pretty good trick, too, which was that one of these friends actually died a short time into the movie, leaving the other to hallucinate her involvement in the rest of the survival mission (apologies for the spoiler, though presumably, if one is reading this review, one already saw that four-year-old movie).

Screenwriters Jonathan Frank and Scott Mann have crafted a direct sequel in a certain sense to the earlier film, though it also does not feature the surviving friend for more than a few seconds and some archival footage. Instead, as it turns out, Shiloh Hunter (Virginia Gardner), the one who did not survive, had a sister, and this story finds Jax (Harriet Slater) in mourning. It seems that, not only did Shiloh’s fate reach the public eye, but her death has been haled as a form of martyrdom for the cause of dangerous climbing—or something like that.

This is an interesting idea in theory—to find a reason to continue the story of a couple of climbers by introducing a sibling who will now follow in her sister’s footprints. That happens when Luce (Arsema Thomas), an old friend of Shiloh’s who has met Jax to buy her sister’s Jeep, dares her to complete the one final mission, helpfully planned out in writing in Shiloh’s journal, upon which Shiloh was not able to embark. It could have been a story rooted in emotion (Slater is quite good in the scenes when Jax is haunted by the last thing she said to Shiloh), except that we rather see through the studio-mandated superficiality of that ambition.

This movie really exists because the first one was just enough of a success—and during the midsection of a global pandemic, to boot—for its studio to move forward with an excuse to give us a new story. If Frank and Mann were not returning screenwriters from the first film (which Mann also directed), one might think that a random screenplay with the same general idea was hijacked and slightly tweaked to tie into this one. It certainly feels that way from the specific involvement of the new hikers’ guide, named John and played by Tom Brittney, who offers the helpful hand of assisting them on “The Devil’s Elbow,” a particularly treacherous trail in Thailand.

John has a bit more to his character than simply a guide, though, which we find out during a frankly absurd, momentum-killing finale with revelation stacked upon revelation and some jarring, genuine surprises the movie has no idea how to handle. Until that point, the movie basically follows the same formula as its predecessor. Jax and Luce head up the trail, which is a rickety and narrow series of planks with only metal-tube brackets and some screws to hold them in place.

In case you’re wondering, yes, that means more shots that are unfriendly to those with a fear of heights—though, because of the Spierig Brothers’ (Michael and Peter) strangely low-intensity direction, not as many as you’d think—and probably more shots than anyone could have predicted of screws magically unfastening themselves from holes. Obviously, the directors play it a little loose with the logic of how any of this physics works, but that’s basically fine. There are a few killer moments, like one where a combination of an earthquake and a rockslide removes options of escape on either side of the women.

That leaves only the brackets, one of which has a sharpened screw jutting out of it that the Spierigs use to predictable (and still queasy) effect, but around that sequence is, to be honest, a lot of nothing in particular, except some flimsy human drama (we care less about this pair than the last one, mainly because the Big Secret between them this time is far more banal) and the minor twist that introduces some last-minute, and completely false, tension. Fall: Deadpoint simply, but noticeably, comes up short when compared to its effective predecessor.

Rating: ** (out of ****)