Entertainment
Deadpoint’ First Look Will Scare You More Than Any Horror or Slasher [Exclusive]
The best movies designed to thrill and horrify you tap into the most primal of fears, even if they’re fears you didn’t know you had. Fall accomplished exactly that in 2022, making us suffer as it stranded two climbers 2,000 feet above the ground on an abandoned television tower and then spent the rest of its runtime finding increasingly horrible ways to show us that if you thought the fall would be bad, staying up there might be worse. Now, the franchise is going considerably bigger — and, as part of Collider’s Fall Exclusive Preview, we can reveal a brand-new look at the sequel.
Fall 2: Deadpoint is directed by Peter Spierig and Michael Spierig, the creative minds behind the likes of Jigsaw, Daybreakers and Predestination, and this time, we’re moving from a giant tower in the desert to one big-ass mountain in Thailand. The sequel follows two climbers who become trapped thousands of feet above the ground during a dangerous climb, where sheer exposure and impossible odds transform their journey into a fight for survival. Fall 2: Deadpoint stars Harriet Slater (Outlander: Blood of My Blood) as Jax Hunter, Arsema Thomas (Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story) as Luce and Tom Brittney (Grantchester) as Jon Platt.
Speaking exclusively with Collider about taking over the franchise, the Spierig Brothers explained that making the sequel bigger was never about making its central premise more complicated:
“For us, the key was to keep the survival story very simple at its core. You have characters who are trapped in an incredibly dangerous environment, and the audience immediately understands what they are trying to do and what is standing in their way. We wanted to make the world around them bigger, but without making the story itself unnecessarily complicated. The height, the isolation and the physical danger are still the heart of the movie. The challenge was finding a new situation that had that same simple, instantly understandable danger as the first film, but felt completely different.”
The different situation of which they speak was taking part on a plank walk high around the ground, which was inspired by the immensely dangerous Huashan Plank Walk in China. Our exclusive images, which have made us feel a bit weak at the knees and wobbly in the belly, glimpse at the precarious wooden pathway and the sheer rock face surrounding it, with seemingly very little separating the climbers from the enormous drop beneath them. Great stuff.
Moving the action to Thailand also meant the directors were able to change the visual identity that was first established in Fall, because rather than simply transplanting the same concept into another location, they were able to make it altogether more dramatic. They explained, “Thailand gave us an incredible opportunity to completely change the visual language of the film. We didn’t want to simply recreate the first movie in a different location. We wanted the environment to feel like a character in its own right.”
“It had to be different and not feel like a repeat of the first film. The plank walk was something we all immediately gravitated towards after Michael and I pitched a number of different ideas to the producers. It felt like it was in the spirit of the first film, but brought something completely different at the same time.”
The pair also revealed that they were already fans of Fall before becoming involved in the sequel. After pitching several potential directions for the follow-up, it was the plank walk that ultimately became the foundation of the movie. “Firstly, we were big fans of the first film, so we were excited to be part of the next chapter. We pitched a number of different ideas, but the one we all landed on was a plank walk inspired by the Huashan Plank Walk in China. It’s considered one of the most dangerous hikes in the world, and once we saw it, we knew we had the foundation for a really intense and cinematic story.”
How Did the Spierig Brothers Make ‘Fall 2’ Look So Terrifying?
For the original Fall, director Scott Mann used practical filmmaking and clever visual effects to create the illusion that its stars were genuinely stranded thousands of feet in the air. The Spierig Brothers wanted to retain that feeling of physical danger, and the sequel was filmed in a Thai rock quarry to provide real rock faces and textures while keeping the production at a manageable height.
“The goal was to shoot as much as we could practically. However, for logistical reasons, there was no way we could film at 4,000 feet, so we shot in a rock quarry in Thailand instead. That gave us the natural rock walls and textures we needed to make the film feel tactile and grounded. We also shot with almost no blue screen, which was really important to us. We wanted the actors out in the sun, exposed to the heat and harsh environment; that authenticity really helps sell the danger and realism of the film.”
That meant putting the actors into some genuinely uncomfortable situations. Although they weren’t actually suspended thousands of feet above the ground, the cast spent extensive periods harnessed roughly 40 feet in the air. “The shoot was tough, but for all the right reasons,” they explained. “The actors had to be harnessed for almost every scene on the plank walk, and they were elevated around 40 feet in the air for long periods of time, which often made communication difficult. But everyone worked incredibly hard and pushed through some very demanding days, and we think that commitment really comes across on screen.”
The directors also encouraged the cast to perform their own stunts where possible, something they believe gave the finished sequences considerably more material to work with.
“Any time the actors did their own stunts, it brought so much to the sequences and gave us a huge amount to work with in the editing room, so those days were always especially exciting.”
There is also a fundamental difference between creating fear through heights and the more conventional horror filmmaking the brothers employed on movies such as Jigsaw. Rather than concealing a monster or threat, Fall 2: Deadpoint can simply show audiences the drop.
“I think the big difference is that with traditional horror, you can often hide the threat and then reveal it,” said Spierig. “With heights, the audience can see the danger very clearly. There’s something very primal about looking down and imagining what would happen if you fell. For us, it was really important to put the audience into the characters’ perspective. We used a lot of point-of-view shots and cameras attached to the actors, so you get that almost GoPro-like feeling of actually being there with them. We also tried to shoot as much as possible for real. We were actually shooting on the side of a rock wall and avoided green screen completely wherever we could. Having the actors physically exposed to the height, the heat, the rain and the wind gives the performances a reality that you can hopefully feel as an audience member.”
The Spierig Brothers Wanted ‘Fall 2’ to Be Their Own Movie
Mann remains heavily involved in the franchise as a writer and producer, with Jonathan Frank co-writing the screenplay. For the Spierig Brothers, taking over as directors meant finding a balance between retaining the brutally effective simplicity of Mann’s original and putting their own stamp on the sequel. The film is produced by James Harris, Mark Lane, Mann, David Haring and Christian Mercuri. They explained:
“We had a huge amount of respect for what Scott achieved with the first film. The simplicity of the concept and the way he created tension from the environment were things we absolutely wanted to preserve. At the same time, we didn’t want to simply copy the first movie. We wanted Fall 2 to feel like its own film and bring our own sensibility to it. We’ve always loved genre filmmaking, and we’re interested in taking a simple premise and pushing it as far as we can visually and physically. So we wanted to increase the scale and spectacle while still keeping the story very simple and character-driven.”
The pair ultimately want audiences to experience the same physical reaction that made the original such an effective exercise in anxiety, and believe the sequel has been designed specifically to benefit from being seen on the biggest screen possible:
“Hopefully audiences feel the same vertigo and fear they experienced watching the first film. We know a lot of movies say you need to see them in a theater but FALL 2: DEADPOINT really is designed as an immersive, vertigo-inducing ride that is heightened by the theatrical experience. So we hope audiences have a great time — and maybe decide not to climb a mountain anytime soon.”
‘Fall 3’ Is Already Part of the Plan
The filmmakers are also looking beyond Deadpoint. A third Fall movie has already been planned, although the Spierig Brothers stressed that they didn’t want the sequel to exist merely as connective tissue between franchise installments. Fall 2: Deadpoint has instead been designed to tell a complete story while leaving the concept open to further exploration. “It was very important to us that Fall 2 work as its own complete movie,” said the Spierigs.
“We didn’t want the audience to feel like they were watching a two-hour setup for another film. At the same time, because the world and the concept have the potential to continue, there are certainly opportunities to take things further,” they continued. “We were conscious of that, but we wanted to make sure the story we were telling in Fall 2 had its own beginning, middle and end. Hopefully, if audiences respond to the movie and want to see more, there’s a very interesting world to explore in a third film. But our priority was always to make Fall 2 satisfying on its own.”
Fall 2: Deadpoint opens exclusively in theaters on September 2, 2026.
- Release Date
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September 2, 2026
- Runtime
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97 Minutes
Cast
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Juju Journey Brener
Young Jax
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