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Arriving as the resurrected Stephen King machine was still churning out film versions, quality be damned, the original film felt like a lazy fanboy tribute. Featuring a 1970s small town setting, teenage actors, telepathic children and disturbing local antagonist, it was almost imitation and, like the very worst of King’s stories, it was also inelegantly overstuffed.

Funnily enough the call came from inside the family home, as it was based on a short story from King’s son Joe Hill, over-extended into a film that was a unexpected blockbuster. It was the story of the Grabber, a sadistic killer of adolescents who would enjoy extending the ritual of their deaths. While molestation was avoided in discussion, there was something clearly non-heteronormative about the character and the era-specific anxieties he was clearly supposed to refer to, reinforced by Ethan Hawke acting with a certain swishy, effeminate flare. But the film was too opaque to ever fully embrace this aspect and even excluding that discomfort, it was too busily plotted and overly enamored with its wearisome vileness to work as only an unthinking horror entertainment.

Follow-up Film's Debut Amidst Production Company Challenges

The next chapter comes as previous scary movie successes the studio are in desperate need of a win. Recently they've faced challenges to make anything work, from Wolf Man to the suspense story to their action film to the complete commercial failure of the AI sequel, and so significant pressure rests on whether Black Phone 2 can prove whether a short story can become a movie that can generate multiple installments. But there's a complication …

Ghostly Evolution

The original concluded with our surviving character Finn (Mason Thames) killing the Grabber, supported and coached by the ghosts of those he had killed before. This situation has required writer-director Scott Derrickson and his writing partner Cargill to take the series and its antagonist toward fresh territory, turning a flesh and blood villain into a paranormal entity, a path that leads them via Elm Street with an ability to cross back into the physical realm made possible by sleep. But different from the striped sweater villain, the villain is markedly uninventive and totally without wit. The disguise stays appropriately unsettling but the production fails to make him as frightening as he briefly was in the first, trapped by complex and typically puzzling guidelines.

Snowy Religious Environment

The main character and his frustratingly crude sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) confront him anew while trapped by snow at an alpine Christian camp for kids, the sequel also nodding toward Freddy’s one-time nemesis Jason Voorhees. Gwen is guided there by an apparition of her deceased parent and what could be their late tormenter’s first victims while the brother, still attempting to deal with his rage and newfound ability to fight back, is following so he can protect her. The screenplay is excessively awkward in its artificial setup, clumsily needing to leave the brother and sister trapped at a setting that will further contribute to backstories for both protagonist and antagonist, supplying particulars we didn’t really need or care to learn about. In what also feels like a more strategic decision to edge the film toward the comparable faith-based viewers that made the Conjuring series into massive hits, Derrickson adds a religious element, with good now more closely associated with the creator and the afterlife while villainy signifies the demonic and punishment, belief the supreme tool against a monster like this.

Over-stacked Narrative

The result of these decisions is additional over-complicate a franchise that was previously close to toppling over, adding unnecessary complications to what ought to be a basic scary film. Regularly I noticed excessively engaged in questioning about the processes and motivations of feasible and unfeasible occurrences to experience genuine engagement. It’s a low-lift effort for the actor, whose visage remains hidden but he maintains real screen magnetism that’s typically lacking in other aspects in the acting team. The setting is at times atmospherically grand but the bulk of the consistently un-scary set-pieces are flawed by a grainy 8mm texture to separate sleep states from consciousness, an unsuccessful artistic decision that appears overly conscious and constructed to mirror the frightening randomness of being in an actual nightmare.

Unpersuasive Series Justification

Running nearly 120 minutes, Black Phone 2, similar to its predecessor, is a needlessly long and hugely unconvincing argument for the birth of a new franchise. If another installment comes, I suggest ignoring it.

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