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Coming as the re-activated master of horror machine was still churning out adaptations, without concern for excellence, The Black Phone felt like a sloppy admiration piece. With its small town 70s backdrop, young performers, gifted youths and disturbing local antagonist, it was close to pastiche and, like the very worst of his literary works, it was also clumsily packed.

Curiously the inspiration originated from inside the family home, as it was adapted from a brief tale from his descendant, over-extended into a film that was a surprise $161m hit. It was the story of the Grabber, a sadistic killer of children 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 historical touchpoints/moral panics he was intended to symbolize, strengthened by Ethan Hawke playing him with a certain swishy, effeminate flare. But the film was too opaque to ever fully embrace this aspect and even aside from that tension, it was overly complicated and overly enamored with its wearisome vileness to work as anything beyond an unthinking horror entertainment.

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

The follow-up debuts as once-dominant genre specialists Blumhouse are in critical demand for a hit. Recently they've faced challenges to make anything work, from Wolf Man to their thriller to the adventure movie to the utter financial disappointment of M3gan 2.0, and so significant pressure rests on whether the sequel can prove whether a brief narrative can become a movie that can generate multiple installments. There’s just one slight problem …

Supernatural Transformation

The original concluded with our Final Boy Finn (Mason Thames) defeating the antagonist, supported and coached by the ghosts of those he had killed before. This has compelled writer-director Scott Derrickson and his co-writer C Robert Cargill to advance the story and its antagonist toward fresh territory, turning a flesh and blood villain into a ghostly presence, a direction that guides them by way of Freddy's domain with an ability to cross back into the real world facilitated by dreams. But different from the striped sweater villain, the Grabber is markedly uninventive and totally without wit. The disguise stays effectively jarring but the production fails to make him as frightening as he temporarily seemed in the first, 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 snowed in at an alpine Christian camp for kids, the second film also acknowledging in the direction of Jason Voorhees Jason Voorhees. Gwen is guided there by a vision of her late mother and potentially their deceased villain's initial casualties while the protagonist, continuing to deal with his rage and recently discovered defensive skills, is following so he can protect her. The screenplay is overly clumsy in its contrived scene-setting, clumsily needing to maroon the main characters at a setting that will further contribute to backstories for both hero and villain, providing information we didn't actually require or want to know about. What also appears to be a more calculated move to edge the film toward the same church-attending crowds that transformed the Conjuring movies into major blockbusters, Derrickson adds a spiritual aspect, with morality now more strongly connected with God and heaven while evil symbolizes the demonic and punishment, belief the supreme tool against a monster like this.

Overcomplicated Story

The result of these decisions is additional over-complicate a franchise that was previously almost failing, incorporating needless complexities to what should be a basic scary film. Regularly I noticed excessively engaged in questioning about the methods and reasons of what could or couldn’t happen to become truly immersed. It's minimal work for the performer, whose visage remains hidden but he possesses authentic charisma that’s mostly missing elsewhere in the ensemble. The location is at times impressively atmospheric but the majority of the continuously non-terrifying sequences are damaged by a gritty film stock appearance to distinguish dreaming from waking, an ineffective stylistic choice that feels too self-aware and constructed to mirror the horrifying unpredictability 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 an additional film universe. If another installment comes, I advise letting it go to voicemail.

• The sequel releases in Australian cinemas on 16 October and in America and Britain on October 17