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Coming as the revived master of horror machine was persistently generating adaptations, without concern for excellence, The Black Phone felt like a sloppy admiration piece. Featuring a small town 70s backdrop, teenage actors, gifted youths and twisted community predator, it was close to pastiche and, similar to the poorest his literary works, it was also clumsily packed.

Funnily enough the source was found from the author's own lineage, as it was adapted from a brief tale from his descendant, stretched into a film that was a shocking commercial success. It was the story of the Grabber, a sadistic killer of children who would enjoy extending the ritual of their deaths. While sexual abuse was not referenced, there was something unmistakably LGBTQ-suggestive about the character and the period references/societal fears he was clearly supposed to refer to, strengthened by Ethan Hawke portraying him with a noticeably camp style. But the film was too vague to ever really admit that and even aside from that tension, it was excessively convoluted and too high on its tiring griminess to work as anything beyond an mindless scary movie material.

Second Installment's Release During Studio Struggles

The follow-up debuts as previous scary movie successes the production company are in urgent requirement for success. Recently they've faced challenges to make any film profitable, from their werewolf film to the suspense story to their action film 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 spawn a franchise. There’s just one slight problem …

Ghostly Evolution

The first film ended with our surviving character Finn (the performer) defeating the antagonist, assisted and trained by the spirits of previous victims. This has compelled filmmaker Derrickson and his writing partner Cargill to move the franchise and its killer to a new place, turning a flesh and blood villain into a supernatural one, a direction that guides them by way of Freddy's domain with an ability to cross back into the real world enabled through nightmares. But unlike Freddy Krueger, the antagonist is markedly uninventive and entirely devoid of humour. The facial covering continues to be appropriately unsettling but the production fails to make him as frightening as he temporarily seemed in the original, limited by complicated and frequently unclear regulations.

Mountain Retreat Location

The protagonist and his annoyingly foul-mouthed sister Gwen (the actress) encounter him again while trapped by snow at a mountain religious retreat for kids, the sequel also nodding regarding the hockey mask killer the camp slasher. Gwen is guided there by a ghostly image of her dead mother and what could be their deceased villain's initial casualties while Finn, still trying to deal with his rage and recently discovered defensive skills, is pursuing to safeguard her. The script is overly clumsy in its contrived scene-setting, awkwardly requiring to leave the brother and sister trapped at a setting that will further contribute to backstories for both main character and enemy, supplying particulars we didn’t really need or want to know about. What also appears to be a more deliberate action to push the movie towards the similar religious audiences that transformed the Conjuring movies into major blockbusters, Derrickson adds a faith-based component, with morality now more strongly connected with God and heaven while villainy signifies Satan and damnation, faith the ultimate weapon against such a creature.

Overcomplicated Story

The consequence of these choices is continued over-burden a franchise that was previously nearly collapsing, adding unnecessary complications to what should be a simple Friday night engine. I often found myself excessively engaged in questioning about the hows and whys of what could or couldn’t happen to experience genuine engagement. It's an undemanding role for Hawke, whose features stay concealed but he maintains real screen magnetism that’s mostly missing elsewhere in the acting team. The environment is at times atmospherically grand but most of the continuously non-terrifying sequences are damaged by a gritty film stock appearance to differentiate asleep and awake, an poor directorial selection that feels too self-aware and constructed to mirror the frightening randomness of being in an actual nightmare.

Weak Continuation Rationale

Running nearly 120 minutes, Black Phone 2, similar to its predecessor, is a needlessly long and highly implausible justification for the establishment of another series. When it calls again, I advise letting it go to voicemail.

• The sequel releases in Australian cinemas on the sixteenth of October and in the United States and United Kingdom on October 17