Fall 2 Movie Review:
One of the more interesting aspects of a survival thriller is that the elements that make this genre are very similar to those that make up a horror film. While both genres have fantastical elements, what makes a survival thriller unique is the fact that the situations that the lead characters are going through is just a couple of bad decisions away for us viewers. This is the premise that Fall (2022) was built on. With a simple story, and a very minimalist setting, it still managed to provide safe thrills for the audience to sail through. Fall 2: Deadpoint, moves to a different setting albeit with more of the same thrills and the same story structure.
Director: The Spierig Brothers
Cast: Harriet Slater, Arsema Thomas, Tom Brittney, Virignia Gardener
After Jax Hunter's (Harriet Slater) sister, Shiloh (Virignia Gardener) passes away on the ill-fated tower in the first film, Jax struggles to move on, which is when she is prompted by Luce (Arsema Thomas), Shiloh's old friend to undertake a dangerous trek, in order to honour Shiloh's memory, when things go wrong. Sounds familiar? Among the things that are new about Fall 2 is the fact that the memories of Shiloh actually has an impact on Jax. She doesn't remember the happy memories, rather the memory that hits Jax are one from dangerous moments she shared with Shiloh. The thrill is high when the trauma hits her. But the film takes everything that worked with the first film, but it diverges away from treating the story like a horror flick, and goes the dramatic way. This reduces the impact of the human conflicts and the thrills that come with surviving nature.
The film also suffers from a weak display of its technical prowess. While climbing the mountain, where the dangers lie in the deadly height of the climb, we are not allowed to indulge in that danger. The camera simply focuses on the characters. For example, there is a dangerous curve in the trek, called Devil's Elbow, which plays a central part in the story. But when we are introduced to it for the first time, the camera takes a different angle than the character's POV, which moves the focus of the film away from its central theme. The cuts from scene to scene results in the film seeming rough around the edges.
Fall 2 is also let down by the contradictory nature of its writing. Shiloh and Luce go on a trek which is banned by the Thai authorities, because the area is plagued by earthquakes, which causes landslides, posing a large danger for the trekkers. The pair do not have a problem to find a guide in John (Tom Brittney), who can take them on the trek, illegally. But when illegal drug smuggling is involved, somehow this singular action is morally wrong and the lead characters are against it. The film tries to justify this problem as a result of choices, but the problem still doesn't stand when one illlegal action is conveniently said to be wrong, and the other is ignored. Another factor that results in this dilemma being significant is the fact that the characters are superficially written. Within minutes we see Shiloh agreeing to Luce's plan, within seconds we see her being okay with getting over her secondary thoughts on the climb, leaving no space for the characters to emote at all.
Both Fall films are built on the simple premise that the liminal amount of paths to escape from a simple, but unpredictable, dangerous situation can bring out the extreme in humans. But where the first film succeeded is that it was efficient in its storytelling and in its editing. Fall 2 tries to recreate every bit of what the made the first film well, but loses focus, and ends up as lost as its characters.
