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Debuting as the revived master of horror machine was still churning out film versions, quality be damned, the first installment felt like a lazy fanboy tribute. Featuring a small town 70s backdrop, teenage actors, psychic kids and disturbing local antagonist, it was almost imitation and, like the very worst of his literary works, it was also clumsily packed.

Curiously the call came from within the household, as it was inspired by a compact narrative from the author's offspring, stretched into a film that was a surprise $161m hit. It was the tale of the antagonist, a cruel slayer of young boys who would revel in elongating their fatal ceremony. While sexual abuse was avoided in discussion, there was something inescapably queer-coded about the villain and the era-specific anxieties he was clearly supposed to refer to, strengthened by the performer portraying him with a noticeably camp style. But the film was too opaque to ever really admit that and even aside from that tension, it was overly complicated and too focused on its exhaustingly grubby nastiness to work as anything more than an unthinking horror entertainment.

Follow-up Film's Debut Amidst Studio Struggles

The next chapter comes as previous scary movie successes the studio are in critical demand for a hit. Recently they've faced challenges to make anything work, from the monster movie to The Woman in the Yard to the adventure movie to the utter financial disappointment of M3gan 2.0, and so significant pressure rests on whether the sequel can prove whether a compact tale can become a film that can generate multiple installments. But there's a complication …

Paranormal Shift

The first film ended with our Final Boy Finn (the performer) killing the Grabber, helped and guided by the apparitions of earlier casualties. It’s forced filmmaker Derrickson and his collaborator C Robert Cargill to advance the story and its villain in a different direction, converting a physical threat into a supernatural one, a path that leads them by way of Freddy's domain with a power to travel into reality enabled through nightmares. But different from the striped sweater villain, the villain is noticeably uncreative and totally without wit. The disguise stays effectively jarring but the film struggles to make him as terrifying as he briefly was in the first, trapped by convoluted and often confusing rules.

Mountain Retreat Location

The protagonist and his irritatingly profane sibling 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. The sister is directed there by a vision of her late mother and what might be their dead antagonist's original prey while the protagonist, continuing to process his anger and recently discovered defensive skills, is following so he can protect her. The script is excessively awkward in its artificial setup, clumsily needing to get the siblings stranded at a setting that will further contribute to histories of hero and villain, supplying particulars we didn't actually require or care to learn about. Additionally seeming like a more strategic decision to push the movie towards the comparable faith-based viewers that turned the Conjuring franchise into major blockbusters, Derrickson adds a faith-based component, with morality now more strongly connected with the divine and paradise while evil symbolizes Satan and damnation, belief the supreme tool against such a creature.

Overcomplicated Story

The consequence of these choices is further over-stack a series that was already close to toppling over, incorporating needless complexities to what should be a basic scary film. I often found myself excessively engaged in questioning about the processes and motivations of what could or couldn’t happen to become truly immersed. It's an undemanding role for Hawke, whose features stay concealed but he maintains real screen magnetism that’s mostly missing elsewhere in the cast. The location is at times impressively atmospheric but the majority of the continuously non-terrifying sequences are flawed by a grainy 8mm texture to differentiate asleep and awake, an unsuccessful artistic decision that seems excessively meta and designed to reflect the horrifying unpredictability of living through a genuine night terror.

Unconvincing Franchise Argument

Lasting approximately two hours, Black Phone 2, similar to its predecessor, is a excessively extended and hugely unconvincing justification for the establishment of another series. The next time it rings, I recommend not answering.

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