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Arriving as the resurrected master of horror machine was still churning out adaptations, regardless of quality, the original film felt like a uninspired homage. Featuring a retro suburban environment, teenage actors, telepathic children and gnarly neighbourhood villain, it was almost imitation and, comparable to the weakest his literary works, it was also awkwardly crowded.

Interestingly the inspiration originated from within the household, as it was based on a short story from the author's offspring, over-extended into a film that was a surprise $161m hit. It was the narrative about the kidnapper, a sadistic killer of adolescents who would enjoy extending the process of killing. While sexual abuse was avoided in discussion, there was something inescapably queer-coded about the character and the period references/societal fears he was clearly supposed to refer to, reinforced by the performer playing him with a noticeably camp style. But the film was too vague to ever fully embrace this aspect and even aside from that tension, it was excessively convoluted and too high on its wearisome vileness to work as anything more than an undiscerning sleepover nightmare fuel.

Follow-up Film's Debut In the Middle of Studio Struggles

Its sequel arrives as former horror hit-makers Blumhouse are in critical demand for a hit. Lately they've encountered difficulties to make any film profitable, from the monster movie to the suspense story to Drop to the complete commercial failure of the robotic follow-up, and so significant pressure rests on whether Black Phone 2 can prove whether a compact tale can become a motion picture that can create a series. However, there's an issue …

Supernatural Transformation

The original concluded with our protagonist Finn (the performer) defeating the antagonist, supported and coached by the apparitions of earlier casualties. This has compelled director Scott Derrickson and his collaborator C Robert Cargill to take the series and its killer to a new place, turning a flesh and blood villain into a ghostly presence, a path that leads them through Nightmare on Elm Street with a power to travel into reality facilitated by dreams. But different from the striped sweater villain, the antagonist is noticeably uncreative and entirely devoid of humour. The disguise stays effectively jarring but the production fails to make him as terrifying as he momentarily appeared in the first, limited by convoluted and often confusing rules.

Mountain Retreat Location

The main character and his annoyingly foul-mouthed sister Gwen (the actress) encounter him again while trapped by snow at a mountain religious retreat for kids, the second film also acknowledging in the direction of Jason Voorhees Jason Voorhees. The female lead is led there by an apparition of her deceased parent and potentially their deceased villain's initial casualties while the protagonist, continuing to process his anger and newfound ability to fight back, is pursuing to safeguard her. The screenplay is too ungainly in its artificial setup, inelegantly demanding to get the siblings stranded at a place that will also add to backstories for both hero and villain, filling in details we didn't actually require or care to learn about. What also appears to be a more calculated move to push the movie towards the similar religious audiences that made the Conjuring series into huge successes, the director includes a religious element, with good now more closely associated with God and heaven while bad represents the demonic and punishment, belief the supreme tool against a monster like this.

Overloaded Plot

The consequence of these choices is continued over-burden a franchise that was previously almost failing, including superfluous difficulties to what could have been a simple Friday night engine. Regularly I noticed too busy asking questions about the methods and reasons of what could or couldn’t happen to experience genuine engagement. It's minimal work for Hawke, whose visage remains hidden but he does have real screen magnetism that’s typically lacking in other aspects in the acting team. The location is at times atmospherically grand but the bulk of the continuously non-terrifying sequences are flawed by a rough cinematic quality to separate sleep states from consciousness, an ineffective stylistic choice that feels too self-aware and created to imitate the horrifying unpredictability of experiencing a real bad dream.

Unconvincing Franchise Argument

Running nearly 120 minutes, Black Phone 2, comparable to earlier failures, is a unnecessarily lengthy and extremely unpersuasive justification for the establishment of a new franchise. If another installment comes, I recommend not answering.

• Black Phone 2 releases in Australian theaters on the sixteenth of October and in the US and UK on the seventeenth of October