Fall 2: Deadpoint (2026) Review - A Vertical Thriller

Two years after the events of the first film, thrill-seeking climbing instructor Jax (Harriet Slater) is leading a commercial expedition on Thailand’s Mount Kwan, a sheer granite monolith that makes the original’s B67 tower look like a jungle gym. Along for the ride is her pragmatic, married best friend Luce (Arsema Thomas), a doctor who has agreed to this trip as a birthday gesture, not out of any love for exposure. Their client, a smug influencer type, is the first to go - a quick, brutal fall that sets the tone. But the real disaster is geological: a rockfall shears off their fixed lines and leaves Jax and Luce stranded on a tiny, crumbling ledge halfway up the face, with no rope above, no comms, and a storm rolling in. The rest of the film is a grim, methodical inventory of their options: climb down? Impossible. Climb up? A virtually blank overhang. Wait? Hypothermia and dehydration. So they climb, occasionally upward, sometimes sideways, always desperate, while flashbacks - heavy-handed but mercifully brief - fill in Jax’s childhood and the trauma that drives her.

Michael Spierig knows the assignment. He films the mountain with a kind of clinical, we-can-do-this-all-day patience, letting the camera linger on handholds that crumble like stale cookies and on angles that make the valley floor look like a postage stamp. The cinematography is the real star. Wide shots from a drone (or, presumably, a helicopter) establish terrifying scale; close-ups on fingers, on carabiners, on sweat dripping off a nose, create an intimacy of pure dread. It’s a masterclass in spatial geography - you always know exactly where the climbers are in relation to their only possible escape route, which only makes every failed attempt feel heavier.

The film’s biggest problem is its script, which oscillates between serviceable and silly. The dialogue is mostly functional - grunts, warnings, and the occasional philosophical mutter about why we climb. Slater, who carries the film with a wiry, haunted physicality, does her best to give Jax interiority, but she’s fighting a backstory that feels like it was laser-cut from the trauma-of-the-week bin. Thomas is more interesting as Luce, the reluctant hero whose fear is visceral and relatable; she’s the audience surrogate, and her growing exhaustion is palpable. But the film undercuts their chemistry with a third-act twist involving a smuggler (Andrey Kasushkin) that veers into “really, this now?” territory. The logic of the climb also bends toward the absurd - ropes that hold when they should snap, a phone that sparks to life at the most convenient moment - but you’re already so invested in the kinetic agony of it all that you forgive the contrivances.

Where the film succeeds is in its pacing. There is no fat here. Once the pair is trapped, the countdown begins, and Spierig never lets up. He understands that in a film like this, death is not the enemy - boredom is. He uses silence well, letting the wind howl and the metal groan, and he knows exactly when to deploy a jump scare (yes, there’s one, and it’s cheap and effective). The storm sequence, in particular, is a standout - a nightmarish ballet of lightning and freezing rain that feels like the mountain itself is trying to shake them off. It’s a shame the final act pulls its punch slightly, resolving with a coda that feels more like a contractual obligation than a satisfying exclamation point.

Pros

• Visceral, vertigo-inducing cinematography that makes clever use of scale and space.
• A tight 98-minute runtime that never overstays its welcome.
• Strong central performances from Harriet Slater and Arsema Thomas, who sell the physical and emotional exhaustion.
• The storm sequence is genuinely harrowing and technically impressive.
• Admirably no-nonsense direction; it knows exactly what it is and delivers on that promise.

Cons

• Derivative story beats heavily recycled from the first “Fall” and countless other survival thrillers.
• Clunky, exposition-heavy flashbacks that explain a trauma we could have inferred.
• A ludicrous third-act subplot involving smugglers that strains credibility.
• Some rope-and-gravity physics require a very willing suspension of disbelief.
• The supporting cast, including Tom Brittney, is wasted in thankless roles.

“Fall 2: Deadpoint” is not a good film in any conventional sense. It is a clunky piece of high-concept genre machinery, powered by plot holes and a familiar template. But it is an effective one. On a purely sensory level, it delivers the queasy, heart-hammering thrill of extreme exposure with surprising fidelity. The TMDb audience score of 5.6 feels about right - it’s a middle-of-the-road thriller that will satisfy fans of the subgenre and frustrate everyone else. If you see it, see it big, on the largest screen possible, and let the sheer drop do the heavy lifting. It won’t change your life, but it might change your opinion on that second glass of water before bed. A functional, pulse-quickening ride with a broken altimeter - but when it climbs, it climbs.