Fall 2 review: Survival thriller by Spierig Brothers falls short of original
Sequel to 2022 original, Fall 2 is too grim for its own good. The film appears to believe that it is a meditation on grief and an inspiring fable about emotional emancipation, without actually tackling either idea with any depth.
Fall 2 frequently plunges audience into a chasm of disbelief that is impossible to climb out of after a while.
Released in 2022, Fall stood out as an uncommonly well-made survival thriller — it had a killer premise, excellent performances and surprising emotional depth. The genre has only become more popular in the years since. This year alone, we’ve seen the Netflix films Apex and The Last House and the Prime Video title The Devil’s Mouth. None of them were any good, although Apex featured a memorably unhinged performance by Taron Egerton. This week’s Fall 2: Deadpoint most definitely comes up short of its predecessor, but more disappointingly, it can’t quite match the camp qualities of this year’s three other survival thrillers either.
The genre thrives on self-awareness and Fall 2 is too grim for its own good. You’d think that a movie that essentially takes the “oh no, it happened again” approach to sequel storytelling would be in on the joke — remember The Hangover Part II (2011) and Scream 2 (1997)? — but Fall 2 truly believes that it is a meditation on grief and an inspiring fable about emotional emancipation, without actually tackling either idea with any depth.
Making excuses for coincidences
The movie stars Harriet Slater as Jax, the sister of Shiloh, the young woman who perished at the end of the first film trying to save her friend Becky. In Fall, Shiloh and Becky climbed to the top of a television tower just for kicks and became stranded there. In Fall 2, Jax is approached by Shiloh’s friend Luce (Arsema Thomas), who pushes her to go on a dangerous adventure to Thailand. The plan is to perform an “illegal climb on the most dangerous trail” in honour of Shiloh's memory.
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A suave guide (Tom Brittney) that the girls hire at the location tells them that the cliffside path, held together by rickety planks and rusty chains, is 4,000 feet above sea level. To get there, the trio must first get to a precarious platform by climbing metal bars with no safety net. In the first act itself, Fall 2 appears to be geographically more convoluted than the original. But the restrictions are what added to the first film’s appeal. By stranding its protagonists in one tiny spot, the movie essentially cornered itself as well. There was no room for narrative cheating; no room for plot contrivances or unearned get-out-of-jail-free cards. There was no getting off the tower for Shiloh and Becky, period. And that’s what made their predicament so hopeless, and as a consequence, the possibility of their survival so engaging.
The sequel moves around way too much in its opening half-hour. By the time an avalanche leaves Jax and Luce trapped on a cliffside ledge with no way out, seasoned viewers would already know that the screenplay is making excuses for future coincidences. And that’s exactly what happens. A laser pointer appears out of thin air just when the girls need it; a walkie-talkie flickers to life just when they are about to lose hope.
Chasm of disbelief
But that’s the kind of movie Fall 2 is; the kind of movie in which a dive bar is called ‘High Spirits’, the kind of movie in which a structure that has braved hell and high-water for 900 years decides to disintegrate the moment our heroines step on it. And then there are the objectively hilarious plot twists involving secret identities and illicit drug trafficking. For a moment, it seems like Fall 2 has walked onto the set of the recent Emraan Hashmi release Awarapan 2, which dealt with the same themes.
It boggles the mind why the film’s sibling directors, the Spierig Brothers, Peter and Michael (identical twins), would bother wasting time on such distractions instead of focusing on the psychological hang-ups that both protagonists are dealing with (poorly). Jax is clearly still bereft, while Luce has a secret alcohol and pills problem. These themes are addressed not with a discreet nod, but with a shriek and a bear-hug.
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The Spierig Brothers, who’ve proven themselves to be particularly skilled in the sci-fi genre in the past, make the mistake of treating Fall 2 as a spectacle and not a psychological thriller. Far too much time is spent trying to convince people that the visual effects are stunning, when they are barely passable at best. There are tricks that filmmakers often employ to mask low-cost effects — rainwater on the lens, for example. In addition to taking the audience’s eyes away from potentially shoddy computer-generated imagery, these tricks also create the illusion of immersion, regardless of how outlandish the plot may be.
But Fall 2 frequently plunges you into a chasm of disbelief that is frankly impossible to climb back out of after a while. The performances are stilted and the leads have little chemistry; they can barely conceal their real accents. The higher the stakes, the more convinced you become that the actors are pretending to be American for a Green Card interview. But this, in a way, is emblematic of the movie’s overall lack of authenticity.
