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Debuting as the re-activated bestselling author machine was persistently generating film versions, regardless of quality, the first installment felt like a sloppy admiration piece. Set against a small town 70s backdrop, teenage actors, psychic kids and twisted community predator, it was nearly parody and, like the very worst of the author's tales, it was also inelegantly overstuffed.

Curiously the inspiration originated from inside the family home, as it was based on a short story from the author's offspring, stretched 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 avoided in discussion, there was something clearly non-heteronormative about the character and the period references/societal fears he was clearly supposed to refer to, emphasized by the performer playing him with a distinctly flamboyant manner. But the film was too vague to ever properly acknowledge this and even aside from that tension, it was too busily plotted and too focused on its exhaustingly grubby nastiness to work as anything more than an undiscerning sleepover nightmare fuel.

Follow-up Film's Debut Amidst Production Company Challenges

Its sequel arrives as former horror hit-makers the studio are in urgent requirement for success. Recently they've faced challenges to make any project successful, from Wolf Man to The Woman in the Yard to the adventure movie to the utter financial disappointment of M3gan 2.0, and so a great deal rides on whether Black Phone 2 can prove whether a brief narrative can become a film that can create a series. But there's a complication …

Paranormal Shift

The initial movie finished with our Final Boy Finn (Mason Thames) killing the Grabber, helped and guided by the apparitions of earlier casualties. This situation has required writer-director Scott Derrickson and his collaborator C Robert Cargill to take the series and its villain in a different direction, turning a flesh and blood villain into a supernatural one, a route that takes them via Elm Street with a power to travel into reality made possible by sleep. But in contrast to the dream killer, the villain is noticeably uncreative and entirely devoid of humour. The disguise stays successfully disturbing but the production fails to make him as scary as he momentarily appeared in the original, constrained by complex and typically puzzling guidelines.

Mountain Retreat Location

The main character and his frustratingly crude sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) confront him anew while stranded due to weather at a high-altitude faith-based facility for kids, the sequel also nodding in the direction of Jason Voorhees Jason Voorhees. The sister is directed there by a vision of her late mother and what could be their dead antagonist's original prey while the brother, still attempting to handle his fury and recently discovered defensive skills, is pursuing to safeguard her. The screenplay is excessively awkward in its forced establishment, awkwardly requiring to get the siblings stranded at a setting that will further contribute to histories of hero and villain, filling in details we didn’t really need or care to learn about. In what also feels like a more deliberate action to guide the production in the direction of the same church-attending crowds that made the Conjuring series into huge successes, the director includes a religious element, with good now more closely associated with the divine and paradise while villainy signifies the devil and hell, belief the supreme tool against this type of antagonist.

Over-stacked Narrative

The consequence of these choices is further over-stack a series that was already close to toppling over, including superfluous difficulties to what could have been a straightforward horror movie. Regularly I noticed too busy asking questions about the hows and whys of what could or couldn’t happen to experience genuine engagement. It’s a low-lift effort for Hawke, whose features stay concealed but he possesses real screen magnetism that’s generally absent in other areas in the ensemble. The setting is at times impressively atmospheric but most of the consistently un-scary set-pieces are flawed by a grainy 8mm texture to differentiate asleep and awake, an unsuccessful artistic decision that feels too self-aware and created to imitate the frightening randomness of being in an actual nightmare.

Unpersuasive Series Justification

Running nearly 120 minutes, the sequel, like M3gan 2.0 before it, is a needlessly long and extremely unpersuasive case for the creation of a new franchise. When it calls again, I suggest ignoring it.

• The follow-up film debuts in Australia's movie houses on 16 October and in the United States and United Kingdom on 17 October