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Coming as the resurrected bestselling author machine was still churning out film versions, regardless of quality, the original film felt like a lazy fanboy tribute. Set against a small town 70s backdrop, young performers, psychic kids and twisted community predator, it was close to pastiche and, similar to the poorest the author's tales, it was also awkwardly crowded.

Funnily enough the inspiration originated from from the author's own lineage, as it was based on a short story from his descendant, expanded into a film that was a surprise $161m hit. It was the story of the Grabber, a sadistic killer of young boys who would enjoy extending their fatal ceremony. While molestation was not referenced, there was something clearly non-heteronormative about the antagonist and the era-specific anxieties he was obviously meant to represent, emphasized by Ethan Hawke portraying him with a certain swishy, effeminate flare. But the film was too opaque to ever really admit that and even excluding that discomfort, it was overly complicated and too high on its exhaustingly grubby nastiness to work as anything more than an unthinking horror entertainment.

Second Installment's Release During Filmmaking Difficulties

The next chapter comes as former horror hit-makers the studio are in desperate need of a win. Recently they've faced challenges to make any film profitable, from Wolf Man to their thriller to Drop to the complete commercial failure of M3gan 2.0, and so significant pressure rests on whether Black Phone 2 can prove whether a compact tale can become a film that can generate multiple installments. But there's a complication …

Ghostly Evolution

The initial movie finished with our Final Boy Finn (Mason Thames) defeating the antagonist, assisted and trained by the spirits of previous victims. It’s forced filmmaker Derrickson and his writing partner Cargill to move the franchise and its villain in a different direction, transforming a human antagonist into a paranormal entity, a path that leads them through Nightmare on Elm Street with a power to travel into reality facilitated by dreams. But different from the striped sweater villain, the antagonist is markedly uninventive and totally without wit. The facial covering continues to be successfully disturbing but the production fails to make him as frightening as he briefly was in the initial film, constrained by complicated and frequently unclear regulations.

Snowy Religious Environment

The protagonist and his frustratingly crude sister Gwen (the actress) face him once more while stranded due to weather at a mountain religious retreat for kids, the second film also acknowledging toward Freddy’s one-time nemesis Jason Voorhees. The sister is directed there by an apparition of her deceased parent and potentially their late tormenter’s first victims while the protagonist, continuing to process his anger and newfound ability to fight back, is pursuing to safeguard her. The script is overly clumsy in its contrived scene-setting, clumsily needing to get the siblings stranded at a setting that will further contribute to background information for main character and enemy, filling in details we weren't particularly interested in or want to know about. What also appears to be a more strategic decision to push the movie towards the same church-attending crowds that made the Conjuring series into massive hits, the filmmaker incorporates a spiritual aspect, with morality now more strongly connected with the divine and paradise while villainy signifies the devil and hell, faith the ultimate weapon against a monster like this.

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 simple Friday night engine. I often found myself excessively engaged in questioning about the hows and whys of feasible and unfeasible occurrences to experience genuine engagement. It's an undemanding role for Hawke, whose features stay concealed but he maintains genuine presence that’s generally absent in other areas in the ensemble. The location is at times remarkably immersive but the majority of the persistently unfrightening scenes are marred by a gritty film stock appearance to differentiate asleep and awake, an ineffective stylistic choice that seems excessively meta and constructed to mirror the frightening randomness of experiencing a real bad dream.

Weak Continuation Rationale

Running nearly 120 minutes, the follow-up, comparable to earlier failures, is a excessively extended and highly implausible justification for the establishment of an additional film universe. The next time it rings, I advise letting it go to voicemail.

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