Fall 2 (2026) Does What It Says On The Tin, For Better or Worse

It’s the question on everyone’s minds whenever a suspenseful thriller gets a sequel: how will you engineer the same suspense without it coming across as completely contrived? How will you make sure that the people of Amity Island will ignore Chief Brody’s concerns yet again when another shark comes to their shores? How do you get Sandra Bullock on another form of transport that’s been commandeered by evil masterminds? And how do you get a young woman traumatised by the death of her adrenaline junkie sister onto a dangerous mountain in very temperamental weather? Fall 2 (subtitled everywhere else as Deadpoint) may show its characters climbing up the fictitious Mount Kwan in Thailand, but it has its own uphill battle to face, as its own existence is absolutely ridiculous.

If Fall 2 had been a standalone sequel, that would be one thing, but connecting it so closely to the first film doesn’t endear us to the new characters in the slightest. Characters who knew nothing about Shiloh Hunter’s death on the top of a radio tower are, at worst, naive. Characters who are inspired by her escapades to climb a rock face that’s been permanently closed to the public for decades are, at best, pillocks. Then again, the first Fall was hardly a masterclass in scriptwriting, yet it’s had quite the appeal to modern audiences because of the commitment to its sky-high visuals and nail-biting spectacle. Making a film that doesn’t capitalise on that potential could be seen as a bad box-office move, and so Fall 2 ticks off all the necessary elements. It has a new setting for awe-inspiring spectacle and acrophobic dread, a life-threatening predicament with little to no way out, and characters that try and use their practical knowhow to think of a solution. Even the film’s rating is a more inclusive 12A (which, admittedly, it barely gets away with) rather than the original’s 15 certificate.

The spectacle of Fall 2 is great, if a little bit constricted. The first film’s focus on a radio tower sitting in an open desert allowed the camera to concentrate on that wide scenery and the sheer drop. By contrast, half of the frame in any shot of Fall 2 is blocked by the gargantuan Mount Kwan, so sometimes it’s hard to get a sense of the scope. Then again, the establishing shots of the forestry and mountainous terrain that can be seen for miles around do give the setting more majesty than the first film’s barren landscape, and all the POV shots that look down to a chasm below are successful at making the audience squirm in their seats. 

The script throws literally everything at its main characters – there’s weather storms, rotting pathways, earthquakes, and deception to deal with, so it wins points for putting its central pair through hell. However, the film almost writes itself into a corner. By removing so many safety nets and taking away so many options for both forward-progression or spectacle, large stretches of the second act have to rely on either trying the same things and failing, which gets monotonous, or having quieter moments of character drama, which gets a little bit laughable. 

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Easily the worst parts of the first Fall was when it tried to do human drama. The central friendship between Becky and Shiloh was pretty good, but the less said about the presentation of Becky’s grief by simply having her cry and chug alcohol, the better. Fall 2 leans even harder on this angle in its opening stretches, and it’s none the better for it. Oh look, Shiloh’s sister just sits among her sister’s old belongings and looks glum! Oh look, her climbing companion takes her morning medication with a swig of whisky! And that’s just the first twenty minutes: the film’s attempts at character conflict later on fall on deaf ears when they don’t just come out of nowhere, but the audience has lost a whole lot of respect for these people since they go up a dangerous rockface and are surprised when things go pear-shaped. I get that the movie wouldn’t happen if they didn’t go up in the first place, but when these people already aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed and you’re expecting me to admire their courage based on traumatic past experiences, you can’t be too surprised when I call you out for the thing you’re obviously doing: emotional manipulation. 

This is written by the same duo of Scott Mann and Jonathan Frank, but the former delegated directing duties after helming the first one, instead giving the job to the Spierig Brothers. They do a good job with the somewhat increased budget, even if the CG is still a little shonky in parts, and given their background in genre filmmaking they’re a safe pair of hands for this on paper. But the limitations of filming around a mountain rear their ugly heads, as some shots feel clunky and stilted as the duo try to find unique ways of shooting the action, when there are very few shot setups available to them. The direction becomes freer and more open when we get to the film’s third act. Before this, Fall 2 has been following the same formula as its predecessor so religiously, it’s almost reached Home Alone 2: Lost in New York levels of plagiarism. The third act smartly deviates from this, as I was getting worried that the film was even going to replicate the twist in the original film’s third act. However, that’s about as ‘smart’ as the decision-making gets here, as this feels like a climax tacked on to a film that wasn’t long enough. The reveal as to what’s going on comes out of nowhere, and makes no sense given what’s come before. It’s fine for what it was, but it’s an unnecessary addition to character arcs that had at least reached a conclusion. 

As a vehicle for depicting palm-sweating sequences where characters are stuck at high altitude, Fall 2 is a success. As a tight emotionally-inclined narrative, it is ham-fisted, clumsy and belongs on a straight-to-DVD shelf (if those are even still things anymore). So it’s basically on par with the first one, and at worst only slightly below it. It’s because of this consistency that I’m actually curious to see where we go from here.

While the first film ended succinctly, Fall 2’s ending alludes to a whole host of sequels to follow. Considering Fall 2 skews so closely to the first film’s formula, maybe the inherent screenplay flaws and foolhardy actions of the main characters will merely become facets of the series, and not flaws, the more sequels we get. Fall 3 might have been filmed back-to-back with this too, so I guess we won’t have to wait long to find out if the Fall series scratches a particular itch of reliably disposable high-octane entertainment written by first-year film students. And I don’t think I mean that as an insult. 

ALEX’S ARCHIVE – FALL 2