Fall 2: Deadpoint Review: Bigger, Messier, and Less Effective
Sitting in the cinema waiting for the latest Insidious movie to start was where I first saw the trailer for Fall 2: Deadpoint, and if I’m being honest, I was pleasantly surprised. I genuinely thought the first Fall was going to be a one-and-done film, so seeing that a sequel was actually happening immediately caught my attention.
If you asked me why I enjoyed the first movie so much, I’m not sure I could give you any particularly deep reason. I think it really just comes down to my extreme fear of heights and how exhilarating and genuinely terrifying it was to watch these two girls trapped in such a precarious situation. Nothing about Fall was especially groundbreaking, but for me, it was just a really fun movie to sit back and experience.
That simplicity is also what made me curious about Fall 2: Deadpoint. The first movie never needed an overly complicated story to keep me invested, so I wasn’t necessarily looking for the sequel to reinvent the wheel. I just wanted it to find another terrifying situation, give me characters I could care about, and somehow recreate that same sense of anxiety that made the original so much fun to watch. The real question was whether lightning could strike twice, or if Deadpoint would prove that Fall was better left as a one-and-done.
Deadpoint shifts the focus to Jax, Shiloh’s younger sister, who is still struggling to move on after losing her during the events of the first film. Early on, she meets Luce, one of Shiloh’s old friends, who somehow manages to convince her to travel to Thailand and attempt a dangerous plank walk on Mount Kwan as a way of confronting her fears. And this is where the movie immediately started losing me, because Jax agreeing to something this dangerous after knowing her sister died in a frighteningly similar situation already feels hard enough to believe. The fact that the person convincing her to do it is essentially a complete stranger only makes the setup feel even more ridiculous.
I think the biggest problem with Fall 2: Deadpoint is that it tries far too hard to give the story more depth than it really needs. The first movie worked because it was simple: two people were trapped in an absolutely terrifying situation, and that was enough to keep the tension high. Here, the movie keeps piling on emotional revelations, twists, and new layers to the story, but very few of them feel properly developed. Instead of making the movie feel deeper, it starts to feel like a mishmash of ideas fighting for attention.
That also hurts the relationship between Jax and Luce, because there is never much chemistry between them to begin with, and honestly, why would there be? These are two people who barely know each other, yet the movie constantly tries to force emotional weight into their conversations without first building a believable connection between them. The dialogue stays mostly surface level, and even some of the bigger revelations feel designed more to make the audience feel something than to naturally develop the characters. By the time the movie starts throwing even more twists into the mix, I was less emotionally invested and more confused about what kind of story it was actually trying to tell.
Ultimately, Fall 2: Deadpoint feels like a sequel that never really needed to exist, but that does not necessarily mean you should avoid it altogether. Everyone is going to respond to a movie like this differently, and there is every chance someone else walks out of the theatre having a much better time than I did. For me, though, the attempt to make the story bigger, deeper, and more complicated ultimately took away from the simple thrill that made the first movie work so well.
Strangely enough, I am still curious to see where the franchise goes next. The way Deadpoint ends leaves the door open for a third instalment, and while that excitement might seem counterintuitive after everything I have said, I think it comes down to seeing whether the next movie can learn from the mistakes made here. There is still something fun at the core of this franchise, and I am hoping Part 3 remembers that sometimes simplicity is exactly what made Fall work in the first place.