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Debuting as the resurrected master of horror machine was still churning out adaptations, quality be damned, The Black Phone felt like a lazy fanboy tribute. Set against a retro suburban environment, teenage actors, gifted youths and twisted community predator, it was close to pastiche and, comparable to the weakest the author's tales, it was also inelegantly overstuffed.

Curiously the call came from inside the family home, as it was based on a short story from his descendant, over-extended into a film that was a shocking commercial success. It was the tale of the antagonist, a sadistic killer of young boys who would revel in elongating the process of killing. While sexual abuse was never mentioned, there was something clearly non-heteronormative about the character and the era-specific anxieties he was obviously meant to represent, reinforced by the actor portraying him with a distinctly flamboyant manner. But the film was too opaque to ever really admit that and even aside from that tension, it was excessively convoluted and overly enamored with its wearisome vileness to work as anything beyond an mindless scary movie material.

The Sequel's Arrival During Production Company Challenges

Its sequel arrives as once-dominant genre specialists the studio are in urgent requirement for success. Lately they've encountered difficulties to make any project successful, from their werewolf film to their thriller to Drop to the total box office disaster of the AI sequel, and so significant pressure rests on whether Black Phone 2 can prove whether a compact tale can become a movie that can generate multiple installments. But there's a complication …

Ghostly Evolution

The first film ended with our protagonist Finn (the young actor) defeating the antagonist, supported and coached by the spirits of previous victims. This has compelled director Scott Derrickson and his collaborator C Robert Cargill to advance the story and its villain in a different direction, turning a flesh and blood villain into a ghostly presence, a route that takes them by way of Freddy's domain with a power to travel into the physical realm made possible by sleep. But in contrast to the dream killer, the villain is clearly unimaginative and entirely devoid of humour. The mask remains successfully disturbing but the production fails to make him as scary as he temporarily seemed in the original, trapped by convoluted and often confusing rules.

Snowy Religious Environment

The main character and his irritatingly profane sibling Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) encounter him again while snowed in at a mountain religious retreat for kids, the second film also acknowledging in the direction of Jason Voorhees the camp slasher. The sister is directed there by a ghostly image of her dead mother and what could be their late tormenter’s first victims while the protagonist, continuing to handle his fury and recently discovered defensive skills, is pursuing to safeguard her. The writing is excessively awkward in its artificial setup, clumsily needing to leave the brother and sister trapped at a location that will additionally provide to backstories for both protagonist and antagonist, supplying particulars we weren't particularly interested in or desire to understand. Additionally seeming like a more calculated move to push the movie towards the comparable faith-based viewers that turned the Conjuring franchise into huge successes, the filmmaker incorporates a faith-based component, with good now more closely associated with God and heaven while bad represents Satan and damnation, religion the final defense against this type of antagonist.

Over-stacked Narrative

The consequence of these choices is further over-stack a franchise that was previously almost failing, adding unnecessary complications to what ought to be a simple Friday night engine. Regularly I noticed excessively engaged in questioning about the processes and motivations of possible and impossible events to become truly immersed. It's an undemanding role for the performer, whose features stay concealed but he possesses authentic charisma that’s typically lacking in other aspects in the acting team. The setting is at times remarkably immersive but the majority of the consistently un-scary set-pieces are damaged by a grainy 8mm texture to differentiate asleep and awake, an ineffective stylistic choice that seems excessively meta and constructed to mirror the frightening randomness of being in an actual nightmare.

Weak Continuation Rationale

Lasting approximately two hours, the follow-up, like M3gan 2.0 before it, is a needlessly long and hugely unconvincing argument for the birth of a new franchise. If another installment comes, I suggest ignoring it.

• The sequel debuts in Australia's movie houses on October 16 and in the US and UK on 17 October