Fall 2: Deadpoint

A sequel to the 2022 contained thriller "Fall," now swapping the Texas radio tower for a plank walk on Mount Kwan in Thailand. Harriet Slater plays Jax Hunter, grieving sister of the original's Becky, who gets talked into a memorial climb by Arsema Thomas's Luce. Tom Brittney shows up in support. Grace Caroline Currey and Virginia Gardner return in some capacity from the first one. The Spierig brothers (Peter and Michael, of "Predestination" and "Jigsaw") take over directing duties from Scott Mann, who co-wrote this round with Jonathan Frank. Early minutes do the usual: establish grief, establish the climb, establish how far down the ground is. Then the rock gives.

The Spierigs know how to shoot altitude. The vertical compositions are genuinely clammy, and the mountain photography does what the budget needs it to do, which is make your palms sweat before anything bad happens. Slater is a real find in the lead role, carrying scenes that are mostly her face and a lot of nothing behind her. The practical choice to stage most of the ordeal on an actual plank walk gives the frame a specificity the first film had with the tower. When it leans into pure survival mechanics, which gear to use, which handhold holds, how to ration a water bottle, it's tight and watchable. JoBlo got it about right: fun action, silly melodrama, same shape as the original.

The script keeps reaching for twisty reveals it hasn't earned. There's a backstory engine running under the climb that wants to be clever and ends up being distracting, and the final stretch is already greasing the rails for a Fall 3 in a way you can smell from a mile away. The dialogue flattens any time the camera isn't on a cliff edge, which is a problem because the camera is sometimes not on a cliff edge. Thomas is doing fine work with a character who's half a person on the page. And the sequel math applies: once you've seen the trick, the trick is a trick.

If you had a good time with the first "Fall," you'll have a slightly worse time with this one, and that's probably fine. It's a Saturday-afternoon-with-your-phone movie. Fans of "The Shallows," "47 Meters Down," the whole single-location-stranded-protagonist subgenre, will find their guilty-pleasure receptors firing. If you need characters who talk like humans or thrillers where the writing matches the setpieces, you'll be checking the runtime by minute thirty.

BACKGROUND TV is where this lands because the craft is split cleanly down the middle. The Spierigs direct the altitude like pros; the script treats its characters like plot delivery vehicles. 55% on Rotten Tomatoes is the honest number here, a movie that does the one thing it's built to do and fumbles everything surrounding it. There's no sermon problem, no theme being yelled at you, no messaging taking the wheel. It's just a thin screenplay stapled to a strong location, which is exactly what you want on in the background while you fold laundry and glance up for the dangling-by-a-fingernail bits.