Having watched 2022’s Fall and its sequel, the curiously titled Fall 2: Deadpoint, I’m convinced that I would never survive the contrived scenarios of either film.  It’s not because I would get confused over when to clip-in and clip-out, or how to climb a rusty centuries-old ladder.  It’s because when I needed to get some sleep while stranded on a platform or wooden plank overlooking a tremendous drop, I would roll over and plunge to my death.  Tossing and turning would be my downfall, so to speak.

In 2022’s Fall, thrill-seekers Shiloh and Becky found themselves stranded atop a radio antenna 2,000 feet up in the air.  The sequel definitely tells that movie to hold its beer and introduces an even more incredible place to wind up stranded:  Mount Kwan in Thailand.  Although entirely made up for this movie, there’s a wooden plank that encircles the mountain 4,000 feet up.  If you’re so inclined, you can walk its length and greet an ancient dragon statue that will “eat your fears”.  If you survive this feat of derring-do, I’d be convinced not only that you have no fears left to eat, but no common sense as well.

To prove to the audience how dangerous this plan is, the movie begins with a clumsy prologue, with two men attempting to do the same thing in the pouring rain, at night.  Why isn’t explained, but the conclusion offers a plausible explanation.  Needless to say they don’t make it due to an avalanche, which also happens later because of plot requirements.

And who will be ascending Mount Kill-Em-All?  First there’s Jax (Harriet Slater), the sister of the late Shiloh (Virginia Gardner), who is still grieving her death.  She recently took ownership of Shiloh’s truck, which was stolen during the first movie.  Jax hasn’t been able to look inside it and just wants to sell it.  A flashback scene tells us that Jax has always been in Shiloh’s shadow, trying to impress her older sister with her monkey bar skills when they were kids.  Yes, those skills will become critical at a key point in the movie, reinforcing how movies love to reward characters for their athleticism, no matter how incongruous.  (See the parallel bars scene in Steven Spielberg’s The Lost World.)

Jax’s partner is Luce (Arsema Thomas), who responds to Jax’s “for sale” listing of her sister’s truck.  The two look through the belongings in the back and find a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey, which the two partake of even though the truck was being driven around by a couple of dirtbags.  The intriguing find is Shiloh’s journal, which proves that she wasn’t only a death-defying sort, but an excellent scrapbooker as well.

One page mentions Mount Kwan and the infamous plank walk, and Luce convinces Jax that the only way to get over her sister’s death is to pick up where she left off.  Never mind that her sister died because of her last outrageous stunt climb.  The only way out is through.  Another flashback shows that Jax was never as fearless as her sister.  When the two sky dive, Shiloh pretends to be unconscious and Jax spent minutes scared out of her mind that the two were plummeting to their deaths.  Shiloh explains that her cruel prank was to force her sister to face her fear, to which Jax responds in a way that was either prescient or coincidental.

Over in Thailand, Jax and Luce meet up with rogue climber Jon (Tom Brittney), who will take them up for $5,000.  Why Jax and Luce trust a guy they only just met in a seedy bar is anyone’s guess.  Perhaps because he’s American, handsome and has a nice smile.  Anyway, a deal is struck and they depart at daybreak.

Phase one of the journey requires climbing up a makeshift ladder consisting of rusty metal handles bolted into the side of the mountain.  (This franchise has a rusty metal fetish.)  The climb eventually takes them through the clouds, and to the wooden plank of legend, which is not merely rickety, but decrepit.

Things initially go ok with phase two, with Jon exhibiting solid climbing know-how and encouraging Jax and Luce to keep moving.  When they get to the spot where the two guys in the beginning fell, the way forward becomes tricky.  There’s no place for the trio to clip onto, so they’re forced to walk the plank without it.  Which they do, with Jax being the nervous nelly of the bunch.  (She’s so cute for not wanting to die a horrible death.)

Alas, the mountain still holds a grudge against climbers, and a sudden rainstorm causes an avalanche.  This time, rocks destroy sections of the plank and kill Jon, leaving Jax and Luce stranded with no way of reversing course.  They try using a laser pointer to signal the bar, but the locals ignore it.

After Jax and Luce spend the night sleeping on the side of the mountain, Jon calls the girls via his radio, which is in a backpack hanging from a pipe with no easy way to retrieve it.  Lassoing it fails, leaving them with no other option but to attempt the impossible and not fall while doing so.  Will this moment in time wind up being the girls’ “deadpoint”?

Recommendation

Like the original, Fall 2: Deadpoint is a survival thriller that seeks to trigger our fear of falling over the course of an entire movie.  While this differentiates the Fall movies within the genre, it also requires the movie to go to ridiculous extremes to accomplish it.  Once the characters “go up”, they spend the rest of the film trying to find a way down that doesn’t involve falling.  Even though the situation the characters find themselves in is entirely of their own doing, I’m immediately sympathetic towards them because their fear is my fear.  No matter how dumb they might have been, I don’t want to see them go splat.

Much of the effect Deadpoint had on me was due to the film’s deft camera work and editing.  Either of the Fall movies should be taught in film school, because both serve as perfect examples of how effective a movie can be when it executes the basic language of cinema to perfection.  Cinematographer Andrew Strahorn constantly reinforced the precariousness of the situation with vertigo-inducing shots below the character’s feet.  Editors Tommy Aagaard and Scott Gray ratchet up the tension by focusing on every loose bolt, rusty bar and shaky plank that threatens to send everyone involved down to earth.  You could watch this movie without sound and it would be just as effective.  (Composer Tim Despic’s emotional score also deserves credit for accentuating the action.)

The downfall (sorry) of both Fall movies has been how everything else about them is weak.  The subplots involving the characters are directly inspired from well-worn action movie cliches.  The dialog alternates between perfunctory and corny.  The characters are paper thin and the relationships between them are unconvincing.  The leading actors here–Harriet Slater, Arsema Thomas and Tom Brittney–exhibit a bit of personality and sell the perilous moments with impassioned yells and shrieks, but their performances are bland because the script only gives them basic personalities to work from.

Deadpoint also suffers from trying to outdo its predecessor.  The radio tower setting of the first one worked so well because the camera always reminded me of where the characters were in relation to the ground.  In this movie, however, everyone is up so high that the camera has a difficult time reinforcing the setting beyond it being “above the clouds”.  These climbers could be 400 feet up or 4000 feet up and it wouldn’t make any difference.  The white-knuckle scenes are still effective, but the constant dread that permeated the first movie is largely absent here.

Deadpoint also lacks the problem-solving aspect of the first one.  In Fall, the girls tried to get help by using their cell phone flashlight, dropping a cell phone, using a drone, recharging the drone, and so on.  The fate of the climbers in the sequel, however, comes down to one impossible task.  Because there isn’t much of a story, the movie prolongs things with a silly plot twist, a shocking death and several minutes of unconvincing action movie peril, all of which almost turned me negative on the experience.  For anyone who watches the movie at home, simply turn it off when the characters reach the destination mentioned in the beginning and you’ll be better off.

Fall 2: Deadpoint presents itself as a survival thriller, but it’s really an action movie (like Die Hard or Cliffhanger) without a villain.  The technical skill behind the camera makes up for the lack of a compelling story or characters with tension aplenty.  Not as good as the first one, but still an effective B-movie.  Mildly recommended.

Analysis

What’s odd about Fall 2: Deadpoint is the character motivations make no sense.  This goes beyond the fact that they’re risking their lives circumnavigating the world’s most evil-looking mountain.  If Jax and Luce were presented merely as thrill seekers who only feel alive when they’re closest to death, I would have accepted that without question.  That justification is what drives the original Fall, where Shiloh supports herself by recording her escapades and posting them on social media for click revenue.  She convinces BFF Becky to accompany her climbing up the radio tower as a way of honoring the life of their fellow climber (and Becky’s deceased husband) Dan.  I would have counter-proposed a nice steak dinner at a fancy restaurant instead, but to each their own.

The sequel makes clear through flashbacks that Jax is the exact opposite of her devil-may-care sister.  This makes Jax’s decision to continue in her sister’s tragic footsteps puzzling.  Jax is basically a scaredy cat, so the idea of her going to Thailand and climbing Mount Kwan is both very out of character for her while also being an undertaking she would be very ill-prepared for.  Jax’s motivation boils down to honoring her sister’s memory in the riskiest way possible.

Next is Luce, who pretends to be one of Shiloh’s old friends in order to convince Jax to do the Mount Kwan climb.  Luce’s deception relies heavily on Jax not remembering what the real Luce looked like when they met years ago, which dangerously treads into “all people of a different race look alike” territory.  I don’t believe the filmmakers are racist, though.  Just lazy.

Regardless of how one views Luce’s con, there’s no justification for it when her underlying health situation makes her incredibly sympathetic.  All Luce has to do when she meets Jax is explain how she has terminal brain cancer and would like Jax to join her for a literal “final climb”.  Jax would have been hard-pressed to turn down her dying wish, and the two would have flown together to Thailand on the best terms.

The only thing Luce’s lying does is create a parallel between the original movie and this one.  In Fall, the movie teases out whether Becky will push Shiloh off the platform when she learns Shiloh slept with her husband.  I doubt Jax was seriously considering the same thing, because Luce’s lie was harmless.

Last is Jon, who agrees to take Jax and Luce up the mountain because he needs them to be his drug mules.  This made little sense to me for several reasons.  First, Jon had to have the drugs on his person before the climb, meaning that he could have been caught by the authorities before the group took one step up the mountain.  Second, there are plenty of secluded spots in the jungle where Jon could hand over the drugs.  Climbing to the top of the mountain and giving them to someone flying a helicopter is overkill.  Finally, Jax and Luce surmise that Jon’s plan is his way of avoiding Thailand’s stiff drug smuggling penalties.  However, since the mountain is in Thailand, I would think he could still be arrested if whomever he’s delivering the drugs to is caught.  Jon’s plan is so elaborate and risky that I’d think any alternative would make more sense.

Deadpoint’s biggest flaw is that it doesn’t care whether the characters’ motivations are convincing or not.  It just wants to get Jax, Luce and Jon up on the mountain so that it can get on with scaring us with vertigo-inducing shots.  And then when the main part of the movie runs short, Jon instantly transforms into a stereotypical villain straight out of an Eighties action movie to stretch things out a bit longer.  Thankfully, the money shots were effective enough to make the experience worthwhile.

The horror.  The horror.

One of my pet peeves is when people label a movie that isn’t a horror movie as a horror movie.  Usually this happens when a movie contains horrific scenes, but the movie itself isn’t what I would consider to be a “horror movie”.  For example, All Quiet on the Western Front has some of the most horrific images I’ve seen recently, but it’s not a horror movie.  So, what qualifies a movie as being a horror movie?

I could easily state that I know a horror movie when I see one, but that wouldn’t answer why I don’t believe Deadpoint qualifies.  Horror movies are distinguished elements and rules that set them apart from other genres.  The following is what I believe constitutes a horror movie:

• There must be a force within the story that’s intent on harming or killing one or more people.  This force represents the “monster” and can be a person living or dead, or a supernatural entity.  The force must be acting upon evil intentions.
• The force can also take the form of a living, non-human creature, like a bear, a shark, bees and so on.  In this case, the force is acting according to its nature, not out of any conscious malevolence.
• In the absence of an external force, the protagonist’s own mind can suffice.  Films that do this fall into the “psychological horror” subgenre.
• Optionally, the story should be set in a suitably spooky setting, filled with enough shadows to hide the force.

With the above criterion in mind, Deadpoint isn’t a horror movie, because the force trying to kill the climbers is the natural world, and disaster and/or survival movies don’t qualify.  The movie is undeniably tense and scary, playing heavily on our fear of heights.  But that doesn’t make it a horror movie.  Like its predecessor, Deadpoint is a survival thriller, much like 127 Hours.

Unsung cinematic heroes

While Michael and Peter Spierig have directed six feature films, the only notable film before this one was Jigsaw (2017) which came out nine years ago.  Basically, they’re journeyman directors.  Which is why I called out several members of their technical team above for recognition, because they deserve credit for Deadpoint working as well as it does.

Cinematographer Andrew Strahorn has 59 credits to his name across film and television productions.  Editor Tommy Aagaard has 24 credits.  Co-editor Scott Gray has 38 credits.  Composer Tim Despic has 29 credits.

The best decision the Spierig Brothers made in regards to Deadpoint was surrounding themselves with experienced talent.  Despite its many flaws, the production team collectively delivered an exciting B-movie.  When you hear someone say “surround yourself with the best people”, this movie is a great example of taking that adage seriously.

Rusty bolts

Based on the final shot, I’m guessing Jax is going to goad Becky into some sort of “fall off”?

The movie states that the locals don’t care about the tourists, but that makes no sense because you need them to support the dive bar at least.

The best that can be said about Luce’s fate was that she was dying anyway, but that was a terrible way to go out.

Does Luce’s unfortunate demise mean that Jax gets her sister’s truck back?