Fall 2

Fall proved to be a pretty decent box office success for an indie survival thriller, making seven times its budget and gaining even more popularity once it began streaming. Cue Fall 2: Deadpoint, a sequel penned once again by Scott Mann and Jonathan Frank but this time Peter and Michael Spierig replace Mann on directing duty and transport the perilous action from the US to Thailand.

Rehashing the absurd but entertaining premise of two grieving women trapped on a ridiculously high and dangerously tiny platform, the film, like most sequels, ups the ante.

Where the first film’s besties, Becky (Grace Caroline Currey) and Shiloh (Virginia Gardner), illegally ascended a 2,000 foot TV tower, here Shiloh's sister Jax (Harriet Slater) and old friend Luce (Arsema Thomas) take on the rickety plank walk wrapped around the fictional, 11,000-foot Mount Kwan. Which also, bizarrely, happens to be a drug mule route.

Why Jax is convinced by a single text from a woman she's met once to risk her life attempting this climb is utterly bonkers, even if it was in Shiloh’s ‘Fuck it List’ book of adventures. Her sister’s fate went viral and beyond a childhood video of Jax on the monkey bars, desperate to pull Shiloh's attention away from Becky, her mountaineering skills seem to be lacking. 

The nail-biting efforts to survive are wincing to watch

Jax is the nervous Becky of this situation while Luce fills Shiloh's deceptive and cocksure boots, which mostly functions as a copy-and-paste job save for a few back story details rejigged. The actors do their best to elevate the dialogue beyond cliché, but this is the type of movie where you have to let the naivety of these paper-thin characters wash over you so you can just revel in the high octane silliness of it all.

As they’re led up the mountain by their enigmatic guide (Tom Brittney), rusty ladder rungs and loose joints jostle under their feet. Shot in a quarry, the VFX effectively establishes the sky-high setting, sending shivers down your spine every time the camera pans to the ground. 

Once they reach the eroding planks, the challenges mount up; there’s missing guide rails, even more ramshackle fixtures and the lack of oxygen has a woozy effect on Jax. Soon the stormy weather causes the mountain to crumble, cutting the women off from Jon and leaving them stuck on the aptly titled ‘Devil’s Elbow’. There’s a similar reveal to the original, and an overreliance on flashbacks, but their nail-biting efforts to survive are wincing to watch.

It gets even more comically nerve-wracking by the final act; the drug trafficking subplot is brought to the fore and an insane cliffhanger sequence sets up the already-greenlit third film. 

The Fall franchise might not be elevating the survival thriller to new heights, but its cheap thrills don’t leave you hanging.

In UK and Ireland cinemas now.