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Debuting as the re-activated Stephen King machine was continuing to produce screen translations, without concern for excellence, The Black Phone felt like a uninspired homage. Featuring a small town 70s backdrop, young performers, psychic kids and gnarly neighbourhood villain, it was nearly parody and, comparable to the weakest the author's tales, it was also awkwardly crowded.

Curiously the call came from within the household, as it was inspired by a compact narrative from the author's offspring, expanded into a film that was a unexpected blockbuster. It was the story of the Grabber, a sadistic killer of young boys who would take pleasure in prolonging their fatal ceremony. While sexual abuse was not referenced, there was something unmistakably LGBTQ-suggestive about the antagonist and the era-specific anxieties he was obviously meant to represent, reinforced by Ethan Hawke acting with a distinctly flamboyant manner. But the film was too vague to ever fully embrace this aspect and even excluding that discomfort, it was overly complicated and overly enamored with its exhaustingly grubby nastiness to work as anything beyond an mindless scary movie material.

Second Installment's Release During Studio Struggles

The follow-up debuts as former horror hit-makers Blumhouse are in urgent requirement for success. Recently they've faced challenges to make any project successful, from the monster movie to the suspense story to their action film to the total box office disaster of the AI sequel, and so significant pressure rests on whether the sequel can prove whether a compact tale can become a movie that can create a series. However, there's an issue …

Ghostly Evolution

The first film ended with our protagonist Finn (the performer) eliminating the villain, assisted and trained by the spirits of previous victims. This situation has required writer-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 paranormal entity, a path that leads them via Elm Street with an ability to cross back into the physical realm made possible by sleep. But different from the striped sweater villain, the antagonist is clearly unimaginative and completely lacking comedy. The facial covering continues to be successfully disturbing but the production fails to make him as scary as he temporarily seemed in the initial film, limited by complex and typically puzzling guidelines.

Alpine Christian Camp Setting

The main character and his irritatingly profane sibling Gwen (the performer) face him once more while trapped by snow at an alpine Christian camp for kids, the second film also acknowledging toward Freddy’s one-time nemesis Jason Voorhees. The sister is directed there by a vision of her late mother and what could be their deceased villain's initial casualties while Finn, still trying to handle his fury and fresh capacity for resistance, is following so he can protect her. The script is excessively awkward in its artificial setup, awkwardly requiring to get the siblings stranded at a setting that will further contribute to histories of main character and enemy, providing information we weren't particularly interested in or want to know about. What also appears to be a more calculated move to guide the production in the direction of the comparable faith-based viewers that made the Conjuring series into huge successes, the filmmaker incorporates a religious element, 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

What all of this does is continued over-burden a series that was already close to toppling over, including superfluous difficulties to what ought to be a basic scary film. Regularly I noticed excessively engaged in questioning about the hows and whys of possible and impossible events to experience genuine engagement. It's an undemanding role for Hawke, whose features stay concealed but he maintains genuine presence that’s typically lacking in other aspects in the ensemble. The location is at times remarkably immersive but the majority of the continuously non-terrifying sequences are marred by a grainy 8mm texture to differentiate asleep and awake, an unsuccessful artistic decision that feels too self-aware and created to imitate the horrifying unpredictability of experiencing a real bad dream.

Unpersuasive Series Justification

Running nearly 120 minutes, Black Phone 2, like M3gan 2.0 before it, is a needlessly long and hugely unconvincing justification for the establishment of an additional film universe. When it calls again, I suggest ignoring it.

• The sequel debuts in Australia's movie houses on October 16 and in the US and UK on 17 October