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Coming as the resurrected master of horror machine was still churning out adaptations, regardless of quality, the original film felt like a sloppy admiration piece. Set against a retro suburban environment, young performers, telepathic children and disturbing local antagonist, it was almost imitation and, similar to the poorest King’s stories, it was also awkwardly crowded.

Interestingly the call came from from the author's own lineage, as it was inspired by a compact narrative from King’s son Joe Hill, over-extended into a film that was a surprise $161m hit. It was the story of the Grabber, a cruel slayer of children who would take pleasure in prolonging the ritual of their deaths. While assault was avoided in discussion, there was something unmistakably LGBTQ-suggestive about the antagonist and the historical touchpoints/moral panics he was obviously meant to represent, strengthened by the performer acting with a certain swishy, effeminate flare. But the film was too vague to ever properly acknowledge this and even without that uneasiness, it was too busily plotted and overly enamored with its wearisome vileness to work as anything beyond an unthinking horror entertainment.

The Sequel's Arrival During Filmmaking Difficulties

Its sequel arrives as previous scary movie successes the production company are in desperate need of a win. This year they’ve struggled to make any film profitable, from their werewolf film to their thriller to Drop to the complete commercial failure of the robotic follow-up, and so a great deal rides on whether Black Phone 2 can prove whether a compact tale can become a film that can spawn a franchise. However, there's an issue …

Paranormal Shift

The first film ended with our Final Boy Finn (the performer) eliminating the villain, helped and guided by the spirits of previous victims. This has compelled filmmaker Derrickson and his writing partner Cargill to take the series and its villain in a different direction, converting a physical threat into a supernatural one, a direction that guides them through Nightmare on Elm Street with a capability to return into the physical realm enabled through nightmares. But different from the striped sweater villain, the villain is clearly unimaginative and completely lacking comedy. The mask remains effectively jarring but the film struggles to make him as terrifying as he temporarily seemed in the initial film, trapped by convoluted and often confusing rules.

Mountain Retreat Location

The protagonist and his annoyingly foul-mouthed sister Gwen (the performer) face him once more while snowed in at an alpine Christian camp for kids, the follow-up also referencing toward Freddy’s one-time nemesis the Friday the 13th antagonist. The sister is directed there by an apparition of her deceased parent and potentially their late tormenter’s first victims while Finn, still trying to deal with his rage and newfound ability to fight back, is tracking to defend her. The writing is excessively awkward in its forced establishment, awkwardly requiring to maroon the main characters at a setting that will further contribute to backstories for both main character and enemy, filling in details we didn’t really need or want to know about. What also appears to be a more calculated move to push the movie towards the similar religious audiences that made the Conjuring series into massive hits, Derrickson adds a faith-based component, with good now more closely associated with the creator and the afterlife while evil symbolizes the demonic and punishment, belief the supreme tool against this type of antagonist.

Overcomplicated Story

What all of this does is additional over-complicate a series that was already close to toppling over, including superfluous difficulties to what should be a basic scary film. I often found myself overly occupied with inquiries about the methods and reasons of what could or couldn’t happen to experience genuine engagement. It’s a low-lift effort for the performer, whose features stay concealed but he maintains genuine presence that’s generally absent in other areas in the cast. The environment is at times remarkably immersive but the majority of the persistently unfrightening scenes are marred by a grainy 8mm texture to differentiate asleep and awake, an unsuccessful artistic decision that feels too self-aware and created to imitate the horrifying unpredictability of being in an actual nightmare.

Unpersuasive Series Justification

At just under 2 hours, Black Phone 2, comparable to earlier failures, is a needlessly long and highly implausible argument for the birth of another series. If another installment comes, I suggest ignoring it.

• Black Phone 2 debuts in Australian theaters on the sixteenth of October and in America and Britain on the seventeenth of October