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Arriving as the re-activated Stephen King machine was still churning out film versions, regardless of quality, The Black Phone felt like a lazy fanboy tribute. Set against a 1970s small town setting, high school cast, gifted youths and disturbing local antagonist, it was close to pastiche and, similar to the poorest his literary works, it was also clumsily packed.

Interestingly the call came from within the household, 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 cruel slayer of children who would take pleasure in prolonging the process of killing. While molestation was not referenced, there was something inescapably queer-coded about the character and the period references/societal fears he was clearly supposed to refer to, strengthened by Ethan Hawke acting with a certain swishy, effeminate flare. But the film was too vague to ever really admit that and even without that uneasiness, it was too busily plotted and overly enamored with its wearisome vileness to work as anything more than an mindless scary movie material.

The Sequel's Arrival Amidst Production Company Challenges

Its sequel arrives as once-dominant genre specialists Blumhouse are in desperate need of a win. Recently they've faced challenges to make any project successful, from the monster movie to the suspense story to Drop to the complete commercial failure of the robotic follow-up, and so a great deal rides on whether the sequel can prove whether a short story can become a film that can spawn a franchise. There’s just one slight problem …

Paranormal Shift

The first film ended with our protagonist Finn (the young actor) eliminating the villain, supported and coached by the ghosts of those he had killed before. This has compelled director Scott Derrickson and his co-writer C Robert Cargill to move the franchise and its villain in a different direction, transforming a human antagonist into a ghostly presence, a route that takes them via Elm Street with a power to travel into the real world 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 scary as he briefly was in the first, trapped by convoluted and often confusing rules.

Snowy Religious Environment

The main character and his annoyingly foul-mouthed sister Gwen (the performer) encounter him again while stranded due to weather at a high-altitude faith-based facility for kids, the second film also acknowledging regarding the hockey mask killer Jason Voorhees. The female lead is led there by a ghostly image of her dead mother and what could be their deceased villain's initial casualties while the protagonist, continuing to handle his fury and fresh capacity for resistance, is tracking to defend her. The writing is excessively awkward in its artificial setup, awkwardly requiring to maroon the main characters at a setting that will further contribute to background information for hero and villain, supplying particulars we didn’t really need or care to learn about. Additionally seeming like a more deliberate action to guide the production in the direction of the comparable faith-based viewers that transformed the Conjuring movies into major blockbusters, the filmmaker incorporates a religious element, with morality now more strongly connected with God and heaven while bad represents Satan and damnation, religion the final defense against this type of antagonist.

Overcomplicated Story

The consequence of these choices is additional over-complicate a series that was already nearly collapsing, including superfluous difficulties to what could have been a straightforward horror movie. Frequently I discovered too busy asking questions about the methods and reasons of feasible and unfeasible occurrences to become truly immersed. It's an undemanding role for the performer, whose face we never really see but he maintains authentic charisma that’s mostly missing elsewhere in the cast. The environment is at times remarkably immersive but the majority of the persistently unfrightening scenes are damaged by a gritty film stock appearance to distinguish dreaming from waking, an ineffective stylistic choice that appears overly conscious and constructed to mirror the terrifying uncertainty of being in an actual nightmare.

Unconvincing Franchise Argument

Lasting approximately two hours, Black Phone 2, similar to its predecessor, is a needlessly long and extremely unpersuasive justification for the establishment of an additional film universe. The next time it rings, I advise letting it go to voicemail.

• The follow-up film releases in Australia's movie houses on the sixteenth of October and in America and Britain on October 17