Two women trek across a dangerous plank walk thousands of feet in the air. But when the rotting planks and dangerous weather patterns impede their journey, they find themselves stranded on the mountainside. There’s a steady stream of profanity and a looming sense of doom throughout the film, along with some shocking moments of fatal violence.
So many things tell Jax that climbing Mount Kwan is a bad idea.
Maybe it’s the fact that hiking the famous peak is illegal since authorities closed its hazardous plank walk (think wooden planks literally bolted into the cliffside with no railing) to the public almost 30 years ago.
Maybe it’s the fact that cell coverage on the mountain is spotty at best. So if Jax gets hurt while summitting the peak, she won’t be able to call for help. Even if she does manage to get through to someone, that person likely won’t speak English since Mount Kwan is located in Thailand.
Or maybe it’s the fact that Jax isn’t an experienced climber. The only reason she’s doing this is because she’s trying to connect with her much more experienced, thrill-seeking sister, Shiloh.
Never mind the fact that Shiloh died not all that long ago doing what, exactly? Oh yeah, climbing something illegal in a place with no cell phone coverage.
Not that Jax is seeing visions of Shiloh or anything. No, no. Jax is just trying to find a way to manage her grief over Shiloh’s death. Truth be told, Jax said something pretty awful to Shiloh the last time she saw her, and maybe if she can complete Mount Kwan’s plank walk—a bucket list item for Shiloh—she’ll find some closure.
That’s a whole lot of maybes piled up already, and they’re loaded on top of a whole lot more: Maybe the wooden planks—some of which are hundreds of years old—won’t be rotted through. Maybe the season’s frequent and unpredictable rains won’t come, turning said planks into veritable slip ‘n’ slides.
Or maybe Jax should turn around and go home … like now.
Jax doesn’t trek Mount Kwan’s plank walk alone: She’s accompanied by Luce, a woman who credits Shiloh with helping her get out of a dark place in her life. Later, we learn that dark place was cancer: Luce says that Shiloh inspired her to really live life rather than give in to her disease.
Luce acts as a driving force for Jax. She recognizes that Jax is grieving, and she believes that if Jax can complete Shiloh’s bucket list, perhaps it will help her to find closure.
Both women seem to find a level of peace during the plank walk. They forge their own bond, risking their lives to help each other, and they constantly encourage each other during perilous moments. Both demonstrate great courage at different points. And when revealed truths threaten to tear them apart, they find ways to apologize and forgive.
Jon, a man whom Jax and Luce hire to act as their guide for the plank walk, tells the two women that the walk was created by monks who wanted to “reach the heavens.” One of the mountain’s corners is called the Devil’s Elbow, and we spend a lot of time in that location since their group eventually gets stranded there. There’s a reference to Icarus of Greek mythology. One of Shiloh’s bucket list items is called “hell’s chasm.”
Near the mountain’s summit is a statue of a dragon. Legend says that if you can reach the dragon, it will eat your fears. And when Jax encounters the stone beast, she indeed seems to let go of her fears.
Jax and Luce both indicate that they think Jon is handsome. The women also both wear form-fitting, athletic leggings throughout the majority of the film. At one point, Jax is forced to turn her jacket into an emergency safety harness, and she’s only wearing a sports bra underneath—which is all she wears for the rest of the movie. We’re shown some clips of online influencers, and one woman wears a very low-cut top. A picture of Shiloh also shows a lot of cleavage.
When Jax completes a brave and seemingly impossible task, Luce cheers her on, “I could kiss you right now!”
The entire movie is built on the premise of looming danger. Before the women even get to the plank walk, they have to climb a 4,000-foot ladder comprised of rebar hammered into the mountainside. Once they get to the planks, the vertigo sets in. The camera takes multiple opportunities to look down (isn’t that what we’re not supposed to do?). And sometimes, it even demonstrates the sensation of falling by taking a dive off the cliff.
At any moment, Jax or Luce could take a wrong step and fall to her death. Safety ropes are employed, sure, but the women are forced to unclip their carabiners more often than you’d expect. And even when they are clipped in, heavy rains and earthquakes cause landslides that sometimes take out the very planks and security chains they’re strapped to.
Both women do fall a number of times, each tumble more intense than the last. But it’s when Jax and Luce get stranded by themselves on a section of planks about six feet across that things really amp up. They lose Jax’s safety harness and backpack in a landslide, forcing them to share Luce’s. Luce has no cell service. And even though Jax has one bar on her outdated phone, the emergency services can’t understand her because the people receiving the call don’t speak English.
Suffice it to say that as the women attempt to reach either help or safety, they both nearly perish. Plus, Luce’s arm gets impaled on a metal bolt when she falls, which is rather bloody and painful-looking.
A man tackles a woman to the ground, punches her in the face a few times and tries to strangle her. A woman bites a man’s thumb, and it’s unclear if she severed the appendage or simply injured it. Someone holds a man at gunpoint, forcing him to climb the wooden planks. Someone stabs a guy in the leg with a chunk of wood.
Someone pushes a woman off a mountain platform, and she falls to her death (though we don’t see her hit the ground). Another person falls to their death when someone kicks a bridge out from under them. Two other people also die when a landslide takes out the planks they’re walking on. We hear that many other deaths have occurred on the plank walk, but most of those were accidental.
Videos show Thailand’s police brutally beating drug runners. A smuggler says that when runners fail to deliver drugs, they lose a finger, and he holds up his own hand to reveal two missing phalanges.
Flashbacks show the last time Jax and Shiloh saw each other. The sisters went skydiving, much to Jax’s chagrin. Despite Jax’s terrified protests, Shiloh forced her to jump out of the plane with her. However, partway through the jump, Shiloh passed out. Jax, unable to reach the ripcord, screamed in terror until her sister woke back up and released their shared parachute, landing them safely on the ground.
The events of Fall are recapped here: Essentially, Shiloh climbed an abandoned broadcast tower with her friend and got stuck on top. Then she fell off and died. Her death, which we see some brief clips of here, was then posted in an online video that went viral.
Avulture eats an animal carcass. At one point, before things get too dangerous, Jax asks why she and Luce didn’t just go scuba diving for their big adventure. “Sharks,” Luce answers matter-of-factly.
Luce has a large scar on her skull from cancer surgery. Jax has a dream where Luce dies in her arms in her sleep, and she begs her friend to wake up. Then the dream changes and it’s not Luce but a dead, open-eyed Shiloh in her arms.
[Spoiler warning] A landslide separates Jon from Jax and Luce for a good portion of the film, and both they and the audience are meant to believe he was killed in the accident. However, Jon shows up later, explaining the falling rocks merely knocked him unconscious.
There is one verbal use of the f-word and one written. We hear more than 15 uses of the s-word, as well as multiple uses of “a–,” “a–hole,” “b–ch,” “d–mit,” “h—” and “p—y.” God’s name is misused almost 15 times, paired with “d–n” at least once. Jesus’ name is abused thrice.
We hear a lot about the region’s illegal drug trade. It’s noted that smugglers often use tourists as drug mules (sometimes without the tourists’ knowledge). And when the police catch someone sneaking drugs across the border, they’re often unforgiving, throwing the culprits into prison basically forever.
The movie shows us someone who does just that, hiding fentanyl and attempting to sneak it out of the country.
Jax and Luce share a bottle of whisky after finding it in the trunk of Shiloh’s old car. Shiloh tells Jax, “Consider it medicine.” They toast to Shiloh’s memory. Luce takes some prescription oxycodone the next day with a swig of whisky. People drink and smoke at a bar.
Jax and Luce are warned that the locals near Mount Kwan do not take kindly to strangers. So if the women get into trouble, it’s unlikely that anyone will bother helping them. Sadly, this turns out to be true: When the women manage to get a signal that they’re trapped on the mountainside, the people who see it callously ignore it.
It should also be noted, again, that doing the plank walk is illegal. The group must crawl under a barbed wire fence at the base of the mountain to reach it. And this action winds up having consequences later on in the film.
We learn that two characters lie throughout most of the movie. When those lies are revealed, it understandably changes the group dynamic, causing lots of tension. Clips of online influencers show us that Shiloh’s death went viral. Some online commenters criticize the thrilling but dangerous lifestyle that led up to her death, while others say she was a global inspiration.
Luce says she’s stopped cancer treatments, but it’s not because she wants to die, it’s because she wants to live whatever life she has left to its fullest. That said, she has also stopped answering calls and texts from her parents, who are deeply worried about her.
Look, if you don’t like heights, or if your vertigo is easily triggered, or if you even get nervous watching thrill-seekers seek their own thrills, don’t go see Fall 2: Deadpoint.
The film acts as a sequel to 2022’s Fall, picking up with the younger sister of that film’s main character Shiloh Hunter. And if you know how that film ended—well, you probably won’t be shocked by the events of this film.
But seriously, viewers should take note of the film’s steady stream of profanity and constant loom of doom. Even when things start looking up, there’s somebody or something to knock our main characters back down—often literally.
People do die. A woman takes a serious beating from a man. And the film also deals with the heavy topic of how some cancer patients choose not to continue treatments, preferring instead to spend their final days how they wish.
None of that is easy viewing for the unwary family. So don’t get caught unawares. Just strap on your parachute and … stay on the plane. Because there’s really not enough positive moments in this film to justify the gut-wrenching fall that follows.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
