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Debuting as the resurrected bestselling author machine was persistently generating adaptations, quality be damned, the original film felt like a sloppy admiration piece. Set against a retro suburban environment, high school cast, telepathic children and twisted community predator, it was close to pastiche and, like the very worst of the author's tales, it was also clumsily packed.

Curiously the call came from inside the family home, as it was inspired by a compact narrative from King’s son Joe Hill, over-extended into a film that was a surprise $161m hit. It was the narrative about the kidnapper, a sadistic killer of young boys who would revel in elongating the process of killing. While assault was never mentioned, there was something unmistakably LGBTQ-suggestive about the antagonist and the period references/societal fears he was intended to symbolize, strengthened by the performer acting with a certain swishy, effeminate flare. But the film was too vague to ever properly acknowledge this 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.

Second Installment's Release In the Middle of Filmmaking Difficulties

Its sequel arrives as once-dominant genre specialists the studio are in critical demand for a hit. This year they’ve struggled to make any project successful, from the monster movie to their thriller to their action film to the utter financial disappointment of the AI sequel, and so a great deal rides on whether the continuation can prove whether a short story can become a film that can create a series. However, there's an issue …

Paranormal Shift

The initial movie finished with our protagonist Finn (the performer) killing the Grabber, supported and coached by the ghosts of those he had killed before. It’s forced director Scott Derrickson and his writing partner Cargill to move the franchise and its villain in a different direction, turning a flesh and blood villain into a ghostly presence, a path that leads them by way of Freddy's domain with a capability to return into reality facilitated by dreams. But different from the striped sweater villain, the villain is noticeably uncreative and completely lacking comedy. The mask remains appropriately unsettling but the film struggles to make him as frightening as he momentarily appeared in the original, limited by complicated and frequently unclear regulations.

Mountain Retreat Location

The main character and his irritatingly profane sibling Gwen (the performer) encounter him again while trapped by snow at an alpine Christian camp for kids, the second film also acknowledging in the direction of Jason Voorhees the Friday the 13th antagonist. Gwen is guided there by a vision of her late mother and potentially their dead antagonist's original prey while Finn, still trying to process his anger and recently discovered defensive skills, is tracking to defend her. The script is excessively awkward in its forced establishment, awkwardly requiring to leave the brother and sister trapped at a place that will also add to background information for protagonist and antagonist, providing information we weren't particularly interested in or want to know about. What also appears to be a more strategic decision to guide the production in the direction of the same church-attending crowds that turned the Conjuring franchise into huge successes, the filmmaker incorporates a religious element, with good now more closely associated with God and heaven while villainy signifies the devil and hell, religion the final defense against such a creature.

Overloaded Plot

The result of these decisions is further over-stack a series that was already nearly collapsing, incorporating needless complexities to what should be a basic scary film. Regularly I noticed too busy asking questions about the processes and motivations of what could or couldn’t happen to feel all that involved. It’s a low-lift effort for the actor, whose features stay concealed but he possesses authentic charisma that’s typically lacking in other aspects in the ensemble. The location is at times atmospherically grand but the majority of the consistently un-scary set-pieces are marred by a grainy 8mm texture to distinguish dreaming from waking, an poor directorial selection that appears overly conscious and created to imitate the horrifying unpredictability of experiencing a real bad dream.

Weak Continuation Rationale

Lasting approximately two hours, Black Phone 2, similar to its predecessor, is a unnecessarily lengthy and highly implausible argument for the birth of an additional film universe. The next time it rings, I suggest ignoring it.

• The sequel debuts in Australian cinemas on October 16 and in the US and UK on the seventeenth of October