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Debuting as the resurrected Stephen King machine was persistently generating film versions, without concern for excellence, the original film felt like a sloppy admiration piece. Set against a retro suburban environment, teenage actors, telepathic children and disturbing local antagonist, it was almost imitation and, like the very worst of his literary works, it was also clumsily packed.

Interestingly the inspiration originated from inside the family home, as it was inspired by a compact narrative from King’s son Joe Hill, stretched into a film that was a shocking commercial success. It was the narrative about the kidnapper, a sadistic killer of children who would revel in elongating the process of killing. While assault was not referenced, there was something clearly non-heteronormative about the villain and the era-specific anxieties he was obviously meant to represent, reinforced by the performer playing him with a distinctly flamboyant manner. But the film was too ambiguous to ever properly acknowledge this and even without that uneasiness, it was overly complicated and too focused on its exhaustingly grubby nastiness to work as anything beyond an mindless scary movie material.

The Sequel's Arrival During Production Company Challenges

The next chapter comes as previous scary movie successes the studio are in critical demand for a hit. This year they’ve struggled to make any project successful, from Wolf Man to The Woman in the Yard to Drop to the total box office disaster of the AI sequel, and so a great deal rides on whether the sequel can prove whether a compact tale can become a film that can generate multiple installments. But there's a complication …

Supernatural Transformation

The first film ended with our surviving character Finn (the performer) defeating the antagonist, helped and guided by the ghosts of those he had killed before. This has compelled director Scott Derrickson and his writing partner Cargill to take the series and its villain in a different direction, transforming a human antagonist into a supernatural one, a route that takes them through Nightmare on Elm Street with a power to travel into the real world facilitated by dreams. But different from the striped sweater villain, the Grabber is clearly unimaginative and completely lacking comedy. The facial covering continues to be effectively jarring but the film struggles to make him as terrifying as he momentarily appeared in the original, limited by complex and typically puzzling guidelines.

Snowy Religious Environment

Finn and his annoyingly foul-mouthed sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) face him once more while stranded due to weather at an alpine Christian camp for kids, the sequel also nodding toward Freddy’s one-time nemesis Jason Voorhees. The sister is directed there by a vision of her late mother and potentially their dead antagonist's original prey while Finn, still trying to handle his fury and newfound ability to fight back, is following so he can protect her. The writing is too ungainly in its artificial setup, awkwardly requiring to leave the brother and sister trapped at a location that will additionally provide to backstories for both protagonist and antagonist, filling in details we didn't actually require or desire to understand. In what also feels like a more calculated move to edge the film toward the similar religious audiences that made the Conjuring series into huge successes, Derrickson adds a spiritual aspect, with virtue now more directly linked with the creator and the afterlife while evil symbolizes the devil and hell, religion the final defense against this type of antagonist.

Overcomplicated Story

The consequence of these choices is continued over-burden a franchise that was previously close to toppling over, including superfluous difficulties to what ought to be a straightforward horror movie. Frequently I discovered excessively engaged in questioning about the methods and reasons of possible and impossible events to become truly immersed. It's an undemanding role for the performer, whose visage remains hidden but he does have real screen magnetism that’s generally absent in other areas in the acting team. The setting is at times remarkably immersive but the majority of the consistently un-scary set-pieces are damaged by a gritty film stock appearance to distinguish dreaming from waking, an poor directorial selection that seems excessively meta and constructed to mirror the terrifying uncertainty of living through a genuine night terror.

Unpersuasive Series Justification

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

• The follow-up film debuts in Australian theaters on October 16 and in the United States and United Kingdom on October 17