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Debuting as the re-activated bestselling author machine was persistently generating adaptations, without concern for excellence, the first installment felt like a sloppy admiration piece. Set against a 1970s small town setting, teenage actors, telepathic children and twisted community predator, it was almost imitation and, like the very worst of the author's tales, it was also awkwardly crowded.

Interestingly the source was found within the household, as it was adapted from a brief tale from King’s son Joe Hill, stretched into a film that was a unexpected blockbuster. It was the story of the Grabber, a brutal murderer of adolescents who would revel in elongating the process of killing. While assault was never mentioned, there was something inescapably queer-coded about the antagonist and the period references/societal fears he was intended to symbolize, emphasized by the actor acting with a certain swishy, effeminate flare. But the film was too opaque to ever really admit that and even without that uneasiness, it was excessively convoluted and too high on its wearisome vileness to work as anything beyond an undiscerning sleepover nightmare fuel.

Second Installment's Release During Studio Struggles

Its sequel arrives as former horror hit-makers Blumhouse are in desperate need of a win. This year they’ve struggled to make anything work, from the monster movie to the suspense story to the adventure movie to the complete commercial failure of the AI sequel, and so a great deal rides on whether Black Phone 2 can prove whether a compact tale can become a movie that can create a series. But there's a complication …

Ghostly Evolution

The first film ended with our surviving character Finn (the performer) eliminating the villain, assisted and trained by the spirits of previous victims. This situation has required writer-director Scott Derrickson and his writing partner Cargill to advance the story and its villain in a different direction, turning a flesh and blood villain into a ghostly presence, a route that takes them by way of Freddy's domain with an ability to cross back into reality facilitated by dreams. But in contrast to the dream killer, the Grabber is clearly unimaginative and entirely devoid of humour. The facial covering continues to be effectively jarring but the production fails to make him as terrifying as he briefly was in the initial film, limited by convoluted and often confusing rules.

Alpine Christian Camp Setting

Finn and his irritatingly profane sibling Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) confront him anew while snowed in at an alpine Christian camp for kids, the sequel also nodding regarding the hockey mask killer Jason Voorhees. Gwen is guided there by a ghostly image of her dead mother and potentially their deceased villain's initial casualties while Finn, still trying to process his anger and fresh capacity for resistance, is pursuing to safeguard her. The writing is too ungainly in its contrived scene-setting, awkwardly requiring to leave the brother and sister trapped at a setting that will further contribute to histories of hero and villain, providing information we didn't actually require 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 huge successes, Derrickson adds a spiritual aspect, with morality now more strongly connected with the divine and paradise while villainy signifies the devil and hell, religion the final defense against this type of antagonist.

Over-stacked Narrative

The result of these decisions is further over-stack a franchise that was previously almost failing, incorporating needless complexities to what should be a simple Friday night engine. Regularly I noticed overly occupied with inquiries about the processes and motivations of possible and impossible events to become truly immersed. It’s a low-lift effort for the performer, whose features stay concealed but he does have genuine presence that’s typically lacking in other aspects in the cast. The location is at times impressively atmospheric but the majority of the continuously non-terrifying sequences are marred by a gritty film stock appearance to separate sleep states from consciousness, an poor directorial selection that appears overly conscious and designed to reflect the terrifying uncertainty of living through a genuine night terror.

Unconvincing Franchise Argument

Running nearly 120 minutes, Black Phone 2, comparable to earlier failures, is a unnecessarily lengthy and hugely unconvincing justification for the establishment of a new franchise. If another installment comes, I suggest ignoring it.

• Black Phone 2 is out in Australian theaters on 16 October and in America and Britain on the seventeenth of October