This is one of those films that makes “suspension of disbelief” an Olympic sport. I want to go through the sequence of events that leads to Jax (Harriet Slater) and Luce (Arsema Thomas) stuck 4,000 feet above sea level on Mount Kwan, Thailand, with no path to safety and no help on the way.
This may be one of those things where no single step here seems impossible, albeit unlikely, yet taken together, this is an embarrassing stretch for even the contrived of screenplays:
1) Jax loses older sister Shiloh to a dangerous climb in Fall
2) Some rando named Luce shows up to help Jax sell Shiloh’s truck
3) Once in truck, the two find Shiloh’s wish list of dangerous climbs
4) The two decide to embark immediately upon the next climb on the list
5) By themselves, without telling anybody
6) In Thailand
7) Even though neither is made of money (do either of you work?)
8) Neither researches the climb in question, but go all the same
9) The climb is blocked from the public for being too dangerous
10) Luckily, a morally compromised guide will take them up anyway
11) Without checking their climbing credentials … or even their fitness, for that matter
12) And the guide, Jon (Tom Brittney), just happens to be American like the girls
13) The peak itself is fenced off with warning signs written in English. The climb is a 4,000 foot tall metal rung ladder pounded into the rock face. Imagine the mountain itself as one giant cylindrical rock. After the ascent, the climb is then just a balancing act about the circumference of the cliff face. Every step is on a plank that has been artificially attached to the exterior of the cliff face.
14) On the day in question, the weather is so inclement that rocks from above fall, smashing selected planks.
15) During one of these rockfalls, the women become separate from their guide.
16) During another, they become separated from their equipment, including the radio, their only hope of exterior salvation.
17) Because the Thai government has forbidden this climb, no one is monitoring the area in question.
18) Nobody in the bar where they start from is even mildly curious about what happened to those silly tourists who seems like they were up for something stupid.
As I say, NONE of those things seems impossible on its own, but COME ON. That is a long, long ride to get two foreign girls up a tree without a rope.
Oh, 
and don’t even get me started on the rickety Temple-of-Doom bridge, the character with a literal deathwish, or the drug dealing angle. Who taught you people how to write a screenplay?!
Clearly there were things I didn’t like about this film, ranging from the emotional (your sister DIED from dangerous thrill-seeking and YOU LEARNED NOTHING from that?!) to the practical (do you have parents? What do they think? Who is financing this trip to Thailand? And why in this obscure Man-with-the-Golden-Gun region of the world does everybody speak English?)
However, there were things I did like about the film—the cinematography is pleasing to the extent that one actually wants to be stuck on the mountain. And the film certainly didn’t lack for tension. Walking on rickety planks 4,000 feet above ground will do that.
It occurs to me that there is a great deal of trust in almost every climb one encounters. I think that was the appeal of Free Solo – the only trust there is between the hero and his skill set. In this climb, there is trust between the women who just met, the guide they just met, the dead sister providing the scrapbook of idiocy, the makers of all the safety devices the climbers used in the film, and -most importantly, the trust between the trio and whomever constructed the original ladder, plankway, and bridge – people who, btw, did such an awesome job that the Thai government had condemned the climb.
If you have the kind of brain that can suspend HUGE amounts of disbelief, Fall 2: Deadpoint is a wonderful thrill ride. If you’re me, well, suffice to say it was entertaining on a big screen, but I’ll see Fall again before I see Fall 2.
There once was a girl named Jax
Who suffered from panic attacks
For her sister once fell
Putting the kid through Hell
“So, hey, my turn for a dramatic climax”
Rated PG-13, 98 Minutes
Director: Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig
Writer: Jonathan Frank, Scott Mann
Genre: Dumb ways to die
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Privileged rule avoiders
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Genuine climbers, I imagine
