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Arriving as the revived Stephen King machine was still churning out film versions, regardless of quality, the first installment felt like a sloppy admiration piece. With its retro suburban environment, high school cast, gifted youths and disturbing local antagonist, it was almost imitation and, like the very worst of his literary works, it was also awkwardly crowded.

Interestingly the source was found within the household, as it was inspired by a compact narrative from the author's offspring, expanded into a film that was a shocking commercial success. It was the story of the Grabber, a brutal murderer of young boys who would revel in elongating their fatal ceremony. While assault was never mentioned, there was something unmistakably LGBTQ-suggestive about the character and the period references/societal fears he was obviously meant to represent, reinforced by Ethan Hawke playing him with a noticeably camp style. But the film was too ambiguous to ever really admit that and even excluding that discomfort, it was excessively convoluted and too high on its wearisome vileness to work as anything more than an mindless scary movie material.

Follow-up Film's Debut During Studio Struggles

The next chapter comes as former horror hit-makers the studio are in critical demand for a hit. Lately they've encountered difficulties to make any project successful, from their werewolf film to the suspense story to the adventure movie to the complete commercial failure of the robotic follow-up, and so significant pressure rests on whether Black Phone 2 can prove whether a short story can become a film that can generate multiple installments. But there's a complication …

Ghostly Evolution

The first film ended with our protagonist Finn (the performer) eliminating the villain, assisted and trained by the spirits of previous victims. This has compelled writer-director Scott Derrickson and his collaborator C Robert Cargill to move the franchise and its killer to a new place, converting a physical threat into a ghostly presence, a path that leads them via Elm Street with an ability to cross back into reality enabled through nightmares. But different from the striped sweater villain, the Grabber is noticeably uncreative and totally without wit. The facial covering continues to be successfully disturbing but the film struggles to make him as frightening as he temporarily seemed in the first, constrained by complex and typically puzzling guidelines.

Alpine Christian Camp Setting

The protagonist and his irritatingly profane sibling Gwen (the actress) face him once more while stranded due to weather at a mountain religious retreat for kids, the sequel also nodding toward Freddy’s one-time nemesis Jason Voorhees. The female lead is led there by a vision of her late mother and what might be their deceased villain's initial casualties while Finn, still trying to handle his fury and newfound ability to fight back, is following so he can protect her. The writing is excessively awkward in its forced establishment, inelegantly demanding to leave the brother and sister trapped at a setting that will further contribute to backstories for both protagonist and antagonist, supplying particulars we weren't particularly interested in or want to know about. What also appears to be a more strategic decision to guide the production in the direction of the comparable faith-based viewers that transformed the Conjuring movies into major blockbusters, Derrickson adds a spiritual aspect, with good now more closely associated with the creator and the afterlife while bad represents the demonic and punishment, belief the supreme tool against a monster like this.

Over-stacked Narrative

The consequence of these choices is continued over-burden a franchise that was previously almost failing, including superfluous difficulties to what ought to be a simple Friday night engine. Frequently I discovered excessively engaged in questioning about the hows and whys of what could or couldn’t happen to experience genuine engagement. It's an undemanding role for the performer, whose visage remains hidden but he maintains real screen magnetism that’s mostly missing elsewhere in the acting team. The location is at times remarkably immersive but most of the continuously non-terrifying sequences are damaged by a grainy 8mm texture to differentiate asleep and awake, an ineffective stylistic choice that feels too self-aware and constructed to mirror the frightening randomness of living through a genuine night terror.

Unconvincing Franchise Argument

Lasting approximately two hours, the follow-up, similar to its predecessor, is a excessively extended and hugely unconvincing case for the creation of another series. The next time it rings, I advise letting it go to voicemail.

• Black Phone 2 releases in Australian cinemas on 16 October and in America and Britain on 17 October