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Coming as the resurrected bestselling author machine was continuing to produce adaptations, regardless of quality, the first installment felt like a uninspired homage. Set against a small town 70s backdrop, young performers, telepathic children and gnarly neighbourhood villain, it was almost imitation and, like the very worst of King’s stories, it was also clumsily packed.

Interestingly the source was found within the household, as it was based on a short story from the author's offspring, expanded into a film that was a unexpected blockbuster. It was the tale of the antagonist, a sadistic killer of young boys who would take pleasure in prolonging the ritual of their deaths. While sexual abuse was never mentioned, there was something clearly non-heteronormative about the villain and the era-specific anxieties he was intended to symbolize, strengthened by Ethan Hawke playing him with a distinctly flamboyant manner. But the film was too ambiguous to ever really admit that and even excluding that discomfort, it was too busily plotted and too focused on its tiring griminess to work as anything beyond an undiscerning sleepover nightmare fuel.

Second Installment's Release In the Middle of Production Company Challenges

Its sequel arrives as once-dominant genre specialists the studio are in desperate need of a win. Recently they've faced challenges to make any film profitable, from Wolf Man to the suspense story to Drop to the complete commercial failure of M3gan 2.0, and so a great deal rides on whether Black Phone 2 can prove whether a short story can become a film that can create a series. There’s just one slight problem …

Paranormal Shift

The initial movie finished with our protagonist Finn (the performer) defeating the antagonist, helped and guided by the ghosts of those he had killed before. This situation has required director Scott Derrickson and his collaborator C Robert Cargill to take the series and its antagonist toward fresh territory, converting a physical threat into a supernatural one, a route that takes them through Nightmare on Elm Street with a capability to return into the real world enabled through nightmares. But in contrast to the dream killer, the Grabber is markedly uninventive and completely lacking comedy. The mask remains effectively jarring but the movie has difficulty to make him as frightening as he momentarily appeared in the first, trapped by complex and typically puzzling guidelines.

Mountain Retreat Location

The main character and his annoyingly foul-mouthed sister Gwen (the actress) confront him anew while trapped by snow at a high-altitude faith-based facility for kids, the sequel also nodding regarding the hockey mask killer the Friday the 13th antagonist. The sister is directed there by a vision of her late mother and what might be their late tormenter’s first victims while the brother, still attempting to process his anger and fresh capacity for resistance, is pursuing to safeguard her. The writing is too ungainly in its artificial setup, inelegantly demanding to leave the brother and sister trapped at a location that will additionally provide to histories of main character and enemy, supplying particulars we didn’t really need or want to know about. In what also feels like a more deliberate action to edge the film toward the similar religious audiences that transformed the Conjuring movies into massive hits, the director includes a spiritual aspect, with virtue now more directly linked with the divine and paradise while villainy signifies the demonic and punishment, belief the supreme tool against a monster like this.

Overcomplicated Story

The result of these decisions is additional over-complicate a story that was formerly almost failing, including superfluous difficulties to what should be a basic scary film. I often found myself excessively engaged in questioning about the hows and whys of possible and impossible events to experience genuine engagement. It’s a low-lift effort for the performer, whose visage remains hidden but he does have authentic charisma that’s mostly missing elsewhere in the acting team. The setting is at times impressively atmospheric but most of the persistently unfrightening scenes are flawed by a gritty film stock appearance 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.

Unpersuasive Series Justification

At just under 2 hours, Black Phone 2, comparable to earlier failures, is a needlessly long and extremely unpersuasive justification for the establishment of another series. The next time it rings, I advise letting it go to voicemail.

• The follow-up film releases in Australia's movie houses on 16 October and in America and Britain on 17 October