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Arriving as the re-activated Stephen King machine was continuing to produce film versions, quality be damned, The Black Phone felt like a sloppy admiration piece. Featuring a small town 70s backdrop, teenage actors, telepathic children and disturbing local antagonist, it was close to pastiche and, similar to the poorest his literary works, it was also inelegantly overstuffed.

Curiously the source was found from the author's own lineage, as it was based on a short story from his descendant, over-extended into a film that was a unexpected blockbuster. It was the narrative about the kidnapper, a brutal murderer of children who would enjoy extending the process of killing. While assault was avoided in discussion, there was something unmistakably LGBTQ-suggestive about the antagonist and the period references/societal fears he was intended to symbolize, emphasized by the actor playing him with a distinctly flamboyant manner. But the film was too ambiguous to ever fully embrace this aspect and even aside from that tension, it was too busily plotted and too high on its wearisome vileness to work as anything beyond an undiscerning sleepover nightmare fuel.

Second Installment's Release In the Middle of Production Company Challenges

The follow-up debuts as former horror hit-makers Blumhouse are in urgent requirement for success. Lately they've encountered difficulties to make any film profitable, from Wolf Man to The Woman in the Yard to their action film to the total box office disaster of the AI sequel, and so significant pressure rests on whether the continuation can prove whether a short story can become a movie that can spawn a franchise. There’s just one slight problem …

Paranormal Shift

The first film ended with our surviving character Finn (Mason Thames) defeating the antagonist, assisted and trained by the apparitions of earlier casualties. This has compelled filmmaker Derrickson and his collaborator C Robert Cargill to advance the story and its antagonist toward fresh territory, turning a flesh and blood villain into a supernatural one, a path that leads them via Elm Street with a capability to return into reality facilitated by dreams. But unlike Freddy Krueger, the villain is markedly uninventive and completely lacking comedy. The mask remains appropriately unsettling but the film struggles to make him as frightening as he momentarily appeared in the original, trapped by complex and typically puzzling guidelines.

Snowy Religious Environment

The main character and his irritatingly profane sibling Gwen (the performer) encounter him again while trapped by snow at an alpine Christian camp for kids, the sequel also nodding regarding the hockey mask killer the camp slasher. The sister is directed there by a vision of her late mother and potentially their deceased villain's initial casualties while Finn, still trying to handle his fury and recently discovered defensive skills, is pursuing to safeguard her. The script is excessively awkward in its artificial setup, clumsily needing to leave the brother and sister trapped at a place that will also add to backstories for both protagonist and antagonist, supplying particulars we didn't actually require or desire to understand. What also appears to be a more deliberate action to push the movie towards the similar religious audiences that made the Conjuring series into massive hits, Derrickson adds a religious element, with good now more closely associated with the divine and paradise while evil symbolizes the demonic and punishment, belief the supreme tool against such a creature.

Overcomplicated Story

The consequence of these choices is continued over-burden a story that was formerly close to toppling over, incorporating needless complexities to what could have been a simple Friday night engine. I often found myself excessively engaged in questioning about the methods and reasons of feasible and unfeasible occurrences to become truly immersed. It’s a low-lift effort for the actor, whose features stay concealed but he does have genuine presence that’s generally absent in other areas in the ensemble. The location is at times impressively atmospheric but the bulk of the consistently un-scary set-pieces are marred by a gritty film stock appearance to distinguish dreaming from waking, an poor directorial selection that appears overly conscious and constructed to mirror the frightening randomness of experiencing a real bad dream.

Unconvincing Franchise Argument

At just under 2 hours, the follow-up, similar to its predecessor, is a excessively extended and extremely unpersuasive justification for the establishment of another series. When it calls again, I advise letting it go to voicemail.

• Black Phone 2 debuts in Australian cinemas on the sixteenth of October and in the US and UK on October 17