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Debuting as the resurrected Stephen King machine was continuing to produce screen translations, without concern for excellence, the original film felt like a lazy fanboy tribute. With its 1970s small town setting, high school cast, gifted youths and gnarly neighbourhood villain, it was close to pastiche and, similar to the poorest King’s stories, it was also clumsily packed.

Interestingly the call came 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 unexpected blockbuster. It was the tale of the antagonist, a cruel slayer of children who would take pleasure in prolonging their fatal ceremony. While molestation was never mentioned, there was something inescapably queer-coded about the antagonist and the historical touchpoints/moral panics he was obviously meant to represent, strengthened by Ethan Hawke acting with a certain swishy, effeminate flare. But the film was too vague to ever fully embrace this aspect and even excluding that discomfort, it was overly complicated and too focused on its exhaustingly grubby nastiness to work as anything more than an undiscerning sleepover nightmare fuel.

Second Installment's Release During Production Company Challenges

The follow-up debuts as former horror hit-makers the production company are in critical demand for a hit. Recently they've faced challenges to make any film profitable, from Wolf Man to their thriller to their action film to the utter financial disappointment of M3gan 2.0, and so much depends on whether Black Phone 2 can prove whether a compact tale can become a movie that can spawn a franchise. But there's a complication …

Paranormal Shift

The initial movie finished with our Final Boy Finn (Mason Thames) eliminating the villain, helped and guided by the apparitions of earlier casualties. This situation has required writer-director Scott Derrickson and his writing partner Cargill to advance the story and its antagonist toward fresh territory, transforming a human antagonist into a paranormal entity, a path that leads them through Nightmare on Elm Street with an ability to cross back into the real world made possible by sleep. But in contrast to the dream killer, the antagonist is markedly uninventive and totally without wit. The facial covering continues to be effectively jarring but the production fails to make him as scary as he temporarily seemed in the initial film, limited by convoluted and often confusing rules.

Snowy Religious Environment

The main character and his annoyingly foul-mouthed sister Gwen (the actress) encounter him again while stranded due to weather at an alpine Christian camp for kids, the follow-up also referencing toward Freddy’s one-time nemesis the Friday the 13th antagonist. Gwen is guided there by an apparition of her deceased parent and what could be their late tormenter’s first victims while the brother, still attempting to handle his fury and newfound ability to fight back, is tracking to defend her. The screenplay is overly clumsy in its artificial setup, clumsily needing to leave the brother and sister trapped at a setting that will further contribute to histories of protagonist and antagonist, supplying particulars we weren't particularly interested in or want to know about. In what also feels like a more calculated move to edge the film toward the same church-attending crowds that transformed the Conjuring movies into huge successes, Derrickson adds a faith-based component, with virtue now more directly linked with the creator and the afterlife while villainy signifies Satan and damnation, belief the supreme tool against a monster like this.

Overcomplicated Story

The result of these decisions is additional over-complicate a story that was formerly nearly collapsing, incorporating needless complexities to what could have been a straightforward horror movie. I often found myself overly occupied with inquiries about the methods and reasons of feasible and unfeasible occurrences to become truly immersed. It’s a low-lift effort for the actor, whose visage remains hidden but he maintains real screen magnetism that’s generally absent in other areas in the cast. The location is at times impressively atmospheric but most of the persistently unfrightening scenes are marred by a gritty film stock appearance to differentiate asleep and awake, an unsuccessful artistic decision that appears overly conscious and created to imitate 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 excessively extended and extremely unpersuasive argument for the birth of an additional film universe. The next time it rings, I recommend not answering.

• The sequel is out in Australian cinemas on 16 October and in the US and UK on the seventeenth of October