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Arriving as the re-activated master of horror machine was still churning out screen translations, quality be damned, the first installment felt like a uninspired homage. Featuring a retro suburban environment, teenage actors, gifted youths and disturbing local antagonist, it was almost imitation and, like the very worst of King’s stories, it was also inelegantly overstuffed.

Interestingly the call came from 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 surprise $161m hit. It was the tale of the antagonist, a sadistic killer of adolescents who would revel in elongating their fatal ceremony. While sexual abuse was avoided in discussion, there was something clearly non-heteronormative about the villain and the period references/societal fears he was obviously meant to represent, reinforced by Ethan Hawke acting with a certain swishy, effeminate flare. But the film was too opaque to ever fully embrace this aspect and even without that uneasiness, it was excessively convoluted and overly enamored with its exhaustingly grubby nastiness to work as anything beyond an undiscerning sleepover nightmare fuel.

The Sequel's Arrival In the Middle of Filmmaking Difficulties

The next chapter comes as previous scary movie successes the studio are in critical demand for a hit. Lately they've encountered difficulties to make any film profitable, from the monster movie to the suspense story to the adventure movie to the total box office disaster of the robotic follow-up, and so a great deal rides on whether the continuation can prove whether a compact tale can become a motion picture that can spawn a franchise. However, there's an issue …

Paranormal Shift

The first film ended with our Final Boy Finn (the young actor) defeating the antagonist, assisted and trained by the spirits of previous victims. It’s forced filmmaker Derrickson and his collaborator C Robert Cargill to take the series and its villain in a different direction, converting a physical threat into a ghostly presence, a path that leads them via Elm Street with a power to travel into the real world enabled through nightmares. But unlike Freddy Krueger, the villain is clearly unimaginative and totally without wit. The disguise stays successfully disturbing but the movie has difficulty to make him as terrifying as he briefly was in the first, constrained by convoluted and often confusing rules.

Alpine Christian Camp Setting

Finn and his frustratingly crude sister Gwen (the actress) encounter him again while stranded due to weather at an alpine Christian camp for kids, the sequel also nodding toward Freddy’s one-time nemesis the camp slasher. Gwen is guided there by an apparition of her deceased parent and what might 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 script is too ungainly in its artificial setup, inelegantly demanding to get the siblings stranded at a location that will additionally provide to background information for main character and enemy, filling in details we weren't particularly interested in or care to learn about. What also appears to be a more deliberate action to push the movie towards the same church-attending crowds that made the Conjuring series into massive hits, Derrickson adds a faith-based component, with good now more closely associated with God and heaven while villainy signifies the devil and hell, belief the supreme tool against this type of antagonist.

Overloaded Plot

The consequence of these choices is continued over-burden a franchise that was previously nearly collapsing, incorporating needless complexities to what should be a basic scary film. Frequently I discovered 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 the performer, whose visage remains hidden but he does have genuine presence that’s typically lacking in other aspects in the acting team. The environment is at times atmospherically grand but the bulk of the continuously non-terrifying sequences are marred by a gritty film stock appearance to differentiate asleep and awake, an unsuccessful artistic decision that feels too self-aware and designed to reflect the horrifying unpredictability of being in an actual nightmare.

Unconvincing Franchise Argument

At just under 2 hours, Black Phone 2, comparable to earlier failures, is a needlessly long and hugely unconvincing argument for the birth of a new franchise. When it calls again, I suggest ignoring it.

• The follow-up film releases in Australia's movie houses on 16 October and in the United States and United Kingdom on October 17