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Arriving as the re-activated Stephen King machine was persistently generating screen translations, quality be damned, The Black Phone felt like a lazy fanboy tribute. Set against a small town 70s backdrop, young performers, telepathic children and twisted community predator, it was almost imitation and, similar to the poorest King’s stories, it was also awkwardly crowded.

Interestingly the call came from inside the family home, as it was based on a short story from his descendant, stretched into a film that was a shocking commercial success. It was the tale of the antagonist, a sadistic killer of adolescents who would take pleasure in prolonging the process of killing. While sexual abuse was never mentioned, there was something clearly non-heteronormative about the villain and the era-specific anxieties he was clearly supposed to refer to, strengthened by Ethan Hawke portraying him with a certain swishy, effeminate flare. But the film was too opaque to ever properly acknowledge this and even aside from that tension, it was too busily plotted and too high on its exhaustingly grubby nastiness to work as only an mindless scary movie material.

The Sequel's Arrival Amidst Filmmaking Difficulties

The next chapter comes as former horror hit-makers the production company are in urgent requirement for success. This year they’ve struggled to make anything work, from the monster movie to the suspense story to the adventure movie to the utter financial disappointment of the robotic follow-up, and so significant pressure rests on whether the continuation can prove whether a brief narrative can become a motion picture that can create a series. But there's a complication …

Supernatural Transformation

The original concluded with our Final Boy Finn (the young actor) defeating the antagonist, supported and coached by the ghosts of those he had killed before. It’s forced director Scott Derrickson and his co-writer C Robert Cargill to move the franchise and its antagonist toward fresh territory, turning a flesh and blood villain into a supernatural one, a direction that guides them via Elm Street with an ability to cross back into the real world made possible by sleep. But unlike Freddy Krueger, the villain is noticeably uncreative and completely lacking comedy. The disguise stays successfully disturbing but the film struggles to make him as frightening as he briefly was in the initial film, constrained by complex and typically puzzling guidelines.

Snowy Religious Environment

The main character and his irritatingly profane sibling Gwen (the actress) face him once more while stranded due to weather at a mountain religious retreat for kids, the sequel also nodding toward Freddy’s one-time nemesis Jason Voorhees. Gwen is guided there by a vision of her late mother and what could be their deceased villain's initial casualties while the brother, still attempting to handle his fury and newfound ability to fight back, is pursuing to safeguard her. The writing is too ungainly in its artificial setup, inelegantly demanding to get the siblings stranded at a location that will additionally provide to histories of main character and enemy, filling in details we didn't actually require or care to learn about. Additionally seeming like a more strategic decision to push the movie towards the similar religious audiences that transformed the Conjuring movies into major blockbusters, Derrickson adds a religious element, with morality now more strongly connected with God and heaven while villainy signifies the devil and hell, faith the ultimate weapon against a monster like this.

Over-stacked Narrative

The result of these decisions is additional over-complicate a series that was already close to toppling over, adding unnecessary complications to what could have been a simple Friday night engine. I often found myself overly occupied with inquiries about the methods and reasons of what could or couldn’t happen to experience genuine engagement. It's minimal work for the actor, whose features stay concealed but he possesses genuine presence that’s typically lacking in other aspects in the cast. The setting is at times atmospherically grand but the bulk of the persistently unfrightening scenes are damaged by a rough cinematic quality to separate sleep states from consciousness, an ineffective stylistic choice that seems excessively meta and constructed to mirror the frightening randomness of being in an actual nightmare.

Unpersuasive Series Justification

Lasting approximately two hours, Black Phone 2, similar to its predecessor, is a unnecessarily lengthy and highly implausible argument for the birth of another series. When it calls again, I advise letting it go to voicemail.

• The sequel is out in Australia's movie houses on 16 October and in America and Britain on 17 October