Fall 2 Deadpoint review: A terrifying climb that loses its footing

The fear of falling is primal. You don’t need much of a story to make a person standing thousands of feet above the ground feel like a nightmare. Fall 2: Deadpoint knows this, which is why its best moments are also its simplest: a foot placed on an unstable plank, a rope that doesn’t look quite secure enough, a glance down that you immediately regret.

The sequel to the 2022 survival thriller moves from the abandoned television tower of the original to Thailand’s Mount Kwan. Harriet Slater plays Jax Hunter, the estranged sister of Shiloh, while Arsema Thomas plays Luce, Shiloh’s fearless friend. Still dealing with Shiloh’s death, the two travel to Thailand to attempt the dangerous “Plank Walk” from Shiloh’s bucket list. A rockslide leaves them stranded thousands of feet above the ground, turning a tribute into a fight for survival. If you have vertigo, precautionary caution is advised.

It is a premise that gives the sequel a useful emotional thread. Jax isn’t a natural daredevil. She is anxious, grieving and carrying the guilt of her last encounter with her sister. Putting someone afraid of heights in this situation is a neat reversal of the first film’s dynamic. Slater plays that fear convincingly; you can see Jax calculating every movement before she makes it. Thomas, meanwhile, gives Luce the confidence and recklessness the story needs to keep pushing forward.Their relationship is also more interesting than the screenplay sometimes allows it to be. There is an understandable bond between two women connected by the same person, but the film moves quickly from grief to survival mode, leaving some of that emotional connection underdeveloped.

Where Deadpoint really delivers is in the physical experience. The Spierig brothers, Michael and Peter Spierig, know exactly what the audience has come for. The mountain is vast, the planks look impossibly fragile and the camera repeatedly finds ways of making solid ground feel very far away. The best sequences don’t require a twist. Watching Jax try to move across a narrow ledge while knowing what one wrong step means is enough.

The problem is that the film doesn’t always trust that.

The original Fall had a brutally simple premise and squeezed almost everything it could out of it. Deadpoint tries to compensate for the familiarity of its setup by adding more plot, more backstory and more twists. Some of these give the story momentum; others make the film feel as though it is trying to prove that it is more than a survival thriller.

That is where the screenplay becomes less convincing. Characters occasionally make decisions because the plot needs them to, rather than because the decision feels like something a frightened person would actually make. The dialogue can also be blunt when the film needs to communicate grief or motivation. It tells us what the characters are feeling at moments when their circumstances should be enough to show us.

There is also a curious tonal shift as the story progresses. What begins as a relatively intimate survival drama gradually broadens into something more pulpy. The twists are certainly designed to keep you guessing, but they also dilute the clean terror of the central situation. The higher the film climbs in terms of plot, the less grounded its emotional stakes become.

Visually, however, Deadpoint remains effective. The heights are rendered with enough scale to induce genuine discomfort, and the sound design understands the power of creaking wood, shifting weight and sudden silence. There are moments when the film achieves exactly what this franchise should: making you look away from the screen because your body has already understood the danger before your brain has.

Slater is the film’s biggest asset. Jax’s fear gives the familiar survival formula a human dimension, and the actor avoids turning panic into exaggerated hysteria. Thomas matches her energy, particularly when Luce’s confidence begins to collide with the consequences of the risks she takes. But Fall 2: Deadpoint ultimately faces the problem that comes with making a sequel to a film whose greatest trick was its simplicity. Once you’ve watched two people trapped in an impossible place, changing the location is not enough. The sequel needed to find a fresh emotional or psychological angle and then trust it.

It occasionally does. Jax’s grief and fear give the film something of its own. But whenever the story remembers that looking down is scary, Deadpoint works. Whenever it tries to be cleverer than that, it loses its footing.

Fall 2: Deadpoint is now running in Indian theatres.- EndsPublished By: Anurag BohraPublished On: Sep 12, 2026 17:26 ISTRead more | The Early Spring review: Jing Boran, Sun Qian shine in a deliciously messy romance