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Debuting as the re-activated bestselling author machine was persistently generating film versions, without concern for excellence, the first installment felt like a sloppy admiration piece. Set against a retro suburban environment, teenage actors, telepathic children and twisted community predator, it was almost imitation and, like the very worst of his literary works, it was also inelegantly overstuffed.

Curiously the inspiration originated from from the author's own lineage, as it was adapted from a brief tale from his descendant, stretched into a film that was a surprise $161m hit. It was the story of the Grabber, a sadistic killer of adolescents who would take pleasure in prolonging the process of killing. While assault was not referenced, there was something inescapably queer-coded about the antagonist and the historical touchpoints/moral panics he was obviously meant to represent, strengthened by the performer playing him with a certain swishy, effeminate flare. But the film was too ambiguous to ever fully embrace this aspect and even excluding that discomfort, it was overly complicated and overly enamored with its tiring griminess to work as anything beyond an unthinking horror entertainment.

Second Installment's Release During 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 their werewolf film to The Woman in the Yard to Drop to the total box office disaster of the AI sequel, and so much depends on whether the sequel can prove whether a compact tale can become a film that can generate multiple installments. However, there's an issue …

Ghostly Evolution

The first film ended with our protagonist Finn (the young actor) eliminating the villain, helped and guided by the spirits of previous victims. This has compelled writer-director Scott Derrickson and his writing partner Cargill to move the franchise and its villain in a different direction, converting a physical threat into a ghostly presence, a path that leads them via Elm Street with a capability to return into the real world made possible by sleep. But in contrast to the dream killer, the villain is clearly unimaginative and totally without wit. The mask remains appropriately unsettling but the film struggles to make him as frightening as he momentarily appeared in the original, constrained by convoluted and often confusing rules.

Snowy Religious Environment

Finn and his frustratingly crude sister Gwen (the performer) confront him anew while stranded due to weather at a mountain religious retreat for kids, the second film also acknowledging in the direction of Jason Voorhees the Friday the 13th antagonist. The sister is directed there by a vision of her late mother and what could be their late tormenter’s first victims while the brother, still attempting to handle his fury and fresh capacity for resistance, is following so he can protect her. The script is overly clumsy in its forced establishment, inelegantly demanding to get the siblings stranded at a place that will also add to backstories for both protagonist and antagonist, supplying particulars we didn’t really need or care to learn about. What also appears to be a more calculated move to push the movie towards the comparable faith-based viewers that transformed the Conjuring movies into major blockbusters, the director includes a faith-based component, with good now more closely associated with God and heaven while evil symbolizes the devil and hell, religion the final defense against this type of antagonist.

Over-stacked Narrative

What all of this does is continued over-burden a franchise that was previously nearly collapsing, including superfluous difficulties to what ought to be a simple Friday night engine. Regularly I noticed overly occupied with inquiries about the methods and reasons of possible and impossible events to feel all that involved. It's minimal work for the actor, whose features stay concealed but he maintains genuine presence that’s typically lacking in other aspects in the cast. The environment is at times impressively atmospheric but most of the consistently un-scary set-pieces are marred by a gritty film stock appearance to distinguish dreaming from waking, an unsuccessful artistic decision that feels too self-aware and designed to reflect the terrifying uncertainty of experiencing a real bad dream.

Unpersuasive Series Justification

At just under 2 hours, the follow-up, similar to its predecessor, is a needlessly long and highly implausible justification for the establishment of another series. If another installment comes, I advise letting it go to voicemail.

• Black Phone 2 is out in Australia's movie houses on 16 October and in the United States and United Kingdom on 17 October