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Debuting as the resurrected Stephen King machine was persistently generating film versions, quality be damned, the first installment felt like a lazy fanboy tribute. Featuring a 1970s small town setting, high school cast, gifted youths and twisted community predator, it was nearly parody and, like the very worst of King’s stories, it was also awkwardly crowded.

Interestingly the source was found from the author's own lineage, as it was based on a short story from the author's offspring, stretched into a film that was a shocking commercial success. It was the narrative about the kidnapper, a sadistic killer of children who would enjoy extending the ritual of their deaths. While molestation was avoided in discussion, there was something inescapably queer-coded about the antagonist and the period references/societal fears he was clearly supposed to refer to, strengthened by the performer acting with a distinctly flamboyant manner. 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 beyond an unthinking horror entertainment.

Follow-up Film's Debut In the Middle of Production Company Challenges

The next chapter comes as former horror hit-makers Blumhouse are in desperate need of a win. Lately they've encountered difficulties to make anything work, from Wolf Man to the suspense story to the adventure movie to the complete commercial failure of the AI sequel, and so a great deal rides on whether Black Phone 2 can prove whether a brief narrative can become a movie that can spawn a franchise. But there's a complication …

Ghostly Evolution

The first film ended with our Final Boy Finn (Mason Thames) killing the Grabber, helped and guided by the spirits of previous victims. This has compelled director Scott Derrickson and his collaborator C Robert Cargill to advance the story and its villain in a different direction, converting a physical threat into a supernatural one, a route that takes them via Elm Street with a power to travel into the physical realm enabled through nightmares. But in contrast to the dream killer, the antagonist is noticeably uncreative and entirely devoid of humour. The mask remains effectively jarring but the film struggles to make him as scary as he momentarily appeared in the original, trapped by convoluted and often confusing rules.

Alpine Christian Camp Setting

The main character and his frustratingly crude sister Gwen (the actress) face him once more while trapped by snow at a mountain religious retreat for kids, the sequel also nodding toward Freddy’s one-time nemesis the camp slasher. The sister is directed there by an apparition of her deceased parent 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 tracking to defend her. The screenplay is excessively awkward in its artificial setup, awkwardly requiring to leave the brother and sister trapped at a place that will also add to backstories for both hero and villain, providing information we didn’t really need or want to know about. In what also feels like a more strategic decision to guide the production in the direction of the same church-attending crowds that transformed the Conjuring movies into major blockbusters, Derrickson adds a spiritual aspect, with good now more closely associated with God and heaven while bad represents the demonic and punishment, faith the ultimate weapon against a monster like this.

Overcomplicated Story

What all of this does is continued over-burden a franchise that was previously close to toppling over, adding unnecessary complications to what could have been a simple Friday night engine. Frequently I discovered too busy asking questions about the processes and motivations of what could or couldn’t happen to become truly immersed. It's minimal work for the actor, whose features stay concealed but he possesses genuine presence that’s mostly missing elsewhere in the cast. The location is at times remarkably immersive but the majority of the persistently unfrightening scenes are damaged by a rough cinematic quality to differentiate asleep and awake, an ineffective stylistic choice that feels too self-aware and designed to reflect the frightening randomness of living through a genuine night terror.

Unconvincing Franchise Argument

Lasting approximately two hours, the follow-up, comparable to earlier failures, is a unnecessarily lengthy and hugely unconvincing case for the creation of another series. When it calls again, I advise letting it go to voicemail.

• The sequel releases in Australia's movie houses on October 16 and in the United States and United Kingdom on 17 October