“How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?!” That’s a line spoken by Bruce Willis as NYPD officer-turned-Nakatomi Plaza hero John McClane, lamenting the probability of how he could have possibly landed in a similar predicament in 1990’s Die Hard 2. It’s also a sly wink to the audience, as the answer is essentially little more than: “the first film made a lot of money.” People showed up to the original film, it was a megahit, and thus a franchise was born, internal logic be damned. Considered in that context, Fall 2: Deadpoint is a bit of a puzzler. 2022’s Fall didn’t exactly set the box office on fire: while critical consensus did skew positive, the low-budget feature was decidedly not a megahit, entering theatres at a time when the world was recovering from a global pandemic. Instead, the way we were conditioned to consume media during Covid bore fruits for the film, as Fall found new life on streaming, where its high-concept premise could effectively be sold in the single poster image of two young women stranded precariously at the top of a tower 2,000 feet in the air. Whatever numbers it did in the digital world worked, and so four years later we have Scott Mann, the original director of Fall, and his co-writer Jonathan Frank returning for screenwriting duties, dreaming up a new scenario to place two new young women in another dangerous situation. We have even switched over to an exotic location in Thailand this time around. Trouble is, if you’ve seen Fall, you’ve seen Deadpoint, which similarly struggles to rise above characters making moronic decisions in high-altitude peril.
It’s been several weeks since the events of Fall, and social media has erupted with coverage, reactions, and tributes to fallen influencer Shiloh (Virginia Gardner), who perished during the incident. Picking up the pieces of her life is younger sister Jax (Harriet Slater), who is struggling to make sense of the loss, working out her own inner demons and frayed relationship with her sibling. One day, Jax is contacted by Luce (Arsema Thomas), an old friend of Shiloh’s who is looking to purchase her pickup truck. Accepting the offer, the two rummage through the deceased girl’s belongs to discover a “Fuck-It List,” a diary of planned daredevil stunts and adventures that will now go sadly unfulfilled. At the urging of Luce, Jax agrees to honor her sister by embarking on Shiloh’s next proposed target: Deth Dragon, a plank-walk 4,000 feet above sea level on Mount Kwan in Thailand. Traveling south of Bangkok, the pair arrive at the base of the mountain, hiring local guide John (Tom Brittney) to take them to the summit. Scaling a rusted ladder embedded in the rockface, the trio soon begin the Deth Dragon in proper, traversing a path of rotted wood thousands of feet in the air. It’s not long before disaster strikes, however, when an earthquake dislodges some rocks and smashes up several chunks of the path, separating John from the girls. This leaves Jax and Luce trapped on The Devil’s Elbow, a corner section of the mountain where the two face inconvenient rain, limited oxygen supply, and seemingly nowhere to go but certain death below.
Taking over directorial duties for this sequel are The Spierig Brothers, who made names for themselves with accomplished horror/sci-fi efforts like as Daybreakers and Predestination, but who have since been relegated to dismal for-hire gigs like Jigsaw and Winchester. Their first film in eight years, Deadpoint sadly falls into the latter camp of The Spierigs’ oeuvre, lacking any of the imagination they brought to their earlier works. This is immediately evident in the film’s prologue, a superfluous sequence designed to goose audience expectations by showcasing two men — one holding the other at gunpoint — traversing the Deth Dragon in heavy rain before they inevitably go over the edge. The action then picks up with Jax, who is mourning the loss of Shiloh despite having a serious falling out(!) before her death. Jax is no stranger to her sister’s thrill-seeking ways, as the film repeatedly returns to a flashback of them skydiving together, offering some groundwork for her trauma. But audiences presumably won’t be showing up for an intense study of grief; it’s the peril that sells tickets, and it’s not long before Luce enters the picture, soon sending the two off to Southeast Asia to conquer Mount Kwan. Things don’t get much more de facto than this setup, and they don’t improve much from there either.
Once Jax and Luce are secluded on The Devil’s Elbow, Deadpoint effectively grinds to a halt, offering the intrepid protagonists nowhere to go as they sit and contemplate their fates. To The Spierig’s credit, they do orchestrate one effective sequence where the pair must cross over a series of makeshift monkey bars jutting out from the side of the mountain, with no safety rope to hold onto. It’s a genuine nail-biter of a sequence in a film that could have used a dozen more of them. On a more positive note, the limited scenes of note here at least feature better visual effects this time around, convincingly selling the ordeal in a more textural manner than its predecessor’s tower setting. But this is still the same old Fall as before, with Jax and Luce demonstrating a brazen lack of intelligence as they ignore every broad warning while heading up the mountain. Making matters worse are Mann and Frank, who can’t help but return to their twisty ways, offering not one but two idiotic reveals in the home stretch as a means of shaking up character identities and motivations. There’s simply a profound dearth of inspiration to Fall 2: Deadpoint, and perhaps nothing is less inspiring than the film’s decision to end with the promise of a third feature. We’ll just wait and see what the streaming numbers have to say about that.
DIRECTORS: Peter & Michael Spierig; CAST: Harriet Slater, Arsema Thomas, Tom Brittney, Virginia Gardner; DISTRIBUTOR: Lionsgate; IN THEATERS: September 2; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 37 min.
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