The original “Fall” was a surprise hit, delivering heart-stopping thrills from a seemingly simple premise. Now, directors Michael and Peter Spierig are back with “Fall 2: Deadpoint,” and they’s not just scaling another tower; they’re plunging headfirst into a real-world nightmare that promises to be even more terrifying.
Beyond the Tower
Sequelizing a film like “Fall” could have been a straightforward exercise in repetition: find new victims, hoist them onto another precarious tower. But the Spierig brothers, much like the characters at the center of their films, weren’t content with an easy path. As Peter Spierig told Polygon, “We didn’t wanna make it a tower or anything similar to the first film. There was just no point of going there again.”
The original writer-director Scott Mann set a high bar, so instead of chasing that glory, they sought real-world environments that could deliver visceral thrills, allow for more character movement, and offer diverse set pieces. The solution? Recreate China’s Huashan Plank Walk, an attraction that is, by all accounts, a legitimate IRL nightmare.
Thousands attempt versions of this real-world attraction annually, and videos provided the filmmakers with a preview of what audiences would find terrifying. This allowed their characters to move up, down, left, and right, opening up possibilities for “all kinds of bad things to happen,” as Peter puts it.
A Mountain of Peril
In “Fall 2,” Jax (Harriet Slater) and Luce (Arsema Thomas) aren’t simply trapped in one location, waiting for rescue. Their journey across the mountain provides the Spierigs with new terrain to exploit, from rotten planks to slippery surfaces and, of course, falling rocks. These physical obstacles serve a purpose beyond mere thrills; they contribute to a surprisingly emotional story, as Slater’s Jax grapples with the death of her sister, Shiloh, from the first film.
“Deadpoint” stands on its own, but it also sets the stage for “Fall 3.” The Spierig brothers have consulted on the third film, though it remains writer-director Scott Mann’s project. As Michael puts it, “It’s Scott’s trilogy,” adding that they’ve done “such a good job.”
Embracing the Elements
For the Spierigs, the real thrill of “Fall 2” was shooting as much of the movie on location as possible. Instead of retreating into a soundstage, they built a faux cliffside environment in a quarry and put their performers on physical planks, exposed to actual sunlight, with wind and rain machines adding to the realism.
While the set was only about 40 feet above the ground, the movie needed it to feel like thousands. This decision confused many on the production team. “We had a lot of crew members ask, ‘Why did you do this!?'” Peter admits. “Why make it so much harder?”
This difficulty, however, kept everyone on their toes. When an actor has to climb onto a narrow plank while wearing a harness, baking under the sun and getting hit with artificial rain and wind, that discomfort becomes part of the performance. The audience may never know exactly what was real and what was enhanced with visual effects, but they’ll feel the difference.
Michael succinctly puts it: “When you go to the movies, you want an experience. You don’t want to feel like you’ve been ripped off.”
A Point-of-View Perspective
The Spierigs even incorporated the language of modern amateur climbing videos, building a camera rig onto the actors to recreate the intimate, point-of-view perspective audiences have become accustomed to seeing on GoPros and social media. If your movie is called “Fall 2,” falling needs to look both real and terrifying.
Still, don’t try this at home.
“Fall 2: Deadpoint” is now in theaters.
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