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Coming as the resurrected master of horror machine was persistently generating adaptations, quality be damned, the first installment felt like a uninspired homage. Featuring a small town 70s backdrop, teenage actors, psychic kids and gnarly neighbourhood villain, it was close to pastiche and, similar to the poorest King’s stories, it was also clumsily packed.

Curiously the inspiration originated from from the author's own lineage, as it was based on a short story from his descendant, expanded into a film that was a shocking commercial success. It was the tale of the antagonist, a cruel slayer of young boys who would enjoy extending 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 intended to symbolize, strengthened by Ethan Hawke portraying him with a distinctly flamboyant manner. But the film was too ambiguous to ever properly acknowledge this and even without that uneasiness, it was too busily plotted and overly enamored with its tiring griminess to work as anything more than an mindless scary movie material.

Follow-up Film's Debut During Production Company Challenges

Its sequel arrives as former horror hit-makers Blumhouse are in critical demand for a hit. Recently they've faced challenges to make anything work, from Wolf Man to the suspense story to Drop to the total box office disaster of the robotic follow-up, and so much depends on whether the sequel can prove whether a short story can become a movie that can spawn a franchise. But there's a complication …

Supernatural Transformation

The initial movie finished with our protagonist Finn (Mason Thames) defeating the antagonist, supported and coached by the apparitions of earlier casualties. This situation has required filmmaker Derrickson and his co-writer C Robert Cargill to move the franchise and its antagonist toward fresh territory, transforming a human antagonist into a paranormal entity, a route that takes them by way of Freddy's domain with an ability to cross back into the physical realm enabled through nightmares. But different from the striped sweater villain, the antagonist is markedly uninventive and completely lacking comedy. The mask remains successfully disturbing but the production fails to make him as terrifying as he momentarily appeared in the initial film, limited by complex and typically puzzling guidelines.

Mountain Retreat Location

The main character and his frustratingly crude sister Gwen (the actress) encounter him again while stranded due to weather at a mountain religious retreat for kids, the second film also acknowledging toward Freddy’s one-time nemesis the camp slasher. The female lead is led there by an apparition of her deceased parent and potentially their deceased villain's initial casualties while the brother, still attempting to handle his fury and recently discovered defensive skills, is following so he can protect her. The writing is excessively awkward in its forced establishment, awkwardly requiring to get the siblings stranded at a location that will additionally provide to histories of main character and enemy, supplying particulars we weren't particularly interested in or want to know about. What also appears to be a more calculated move to guide the production in the direction of the comparable faith-based viewers that turned the Conjuring franchise into major blockbusters, the director includes a spiritual aspect, with good now more closely associated with the divine and paradise while evil symbolizes the demonic and punishment, religion the final defense against such a creature.

Overloaded Plot

What all of this does is additional over-complicate a series that was already close to toppling over, including superfluous difficulties to what could have been a simple Friday night engine. I often found myself overly occupied with inquiries about the processes and motivations of what could or couldn’t happen to feel all that involved. It's an undemanding role for the actor, whose visage remains hidden but he maintains genuine presence that’s generally absent in other areas in the ensemble. The environment is at times remarkably immersive but most of the continuously non-terrifying sequences are damaged by a grainy 8mm texture to separate sleep states from consciousness, an poor directorial selection that appears overly conscious and constructed to mirror the horrifying unpredictability of experiencing a real bad dream.

Weak Continuation Rationale

Running nearly 120 minutes, Black Phone 2, like M3gan 2.0 before it, is a needlessly long and highly implausible argument for the birth of a new franchise. The next time it rings, I advise letting it go to voicemail.

• Black Phone 2 releases in Australian theaters on 16 October and in the US and UK on October 17