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Coming as the resurrected bestselling author machine was still churning out screen translations, quality be damned, the first installment felt like a lazy fanboy tribute. With its 1970s small town setting, high school cast, psychic kids and twisted community predator, it was nearly parody and, comparable to the weakest his literary works, it was also clumsily packed.

Curiously the inspiration originated from inside the family home, as it was inspired by a compact narrative from his descendant, stretched into a film that was a unexpected blockbuster. It was the narrative about the kidnapper, a cruel slayer of adolescents who would enjoy extending the ritual of their deaths. While assault was not referenced, there was something clearly non-heteronormative about the villain and the era-specific anxieties he was intended to symbolize, emphasized by the performer portraying him with a noticeably camp style. But the film was too vague to ever properly acknowledge this and even aside from that tension, it was overly complicated and too high on its wearisome vileness to work as only an unthinking horror entertainment.

The Sequel's Arrival In the Middle of Studio Struggles

The follow-up debuts as former horror hit-makers Blumhouse are in critical demand for a hit. Recently they've faced challenges to make any film profitable, from the monster movie to The Woman in the Yard to their action film to the complete commercial failure of the robotic follow-up, and so much depends on whether Black Phone 2 can prove whether a compact tale can become a film that can create a series. But there's a complication …

Supernatural Transformation

The first film ended with our protagonist Finn (the young actor) killing the Grabber, helped and guided by the spirits of previous victims. This has compelled filmmaker Derrickson and his collaborator C Robert Cargill to take the series and its killer to a new place, transforming a human antagonist into a paranormal entity, a path that leads them via Elm Street with a capability to return into reality made possible by sleep. But unlike Freddy Krueger, the villain is markedly uninventive and totally without wit. The mask remains successfully disturbing but the production fails to make him as scary as he momentarily appeared in the first, constrained by convoluted and often confusing rules.

Snowy Religious Environment

The main character and his irritatingly profane sibling Gwen (the actress) encounter him again while snowed in at a high-altitude faith-based facility for kids, the sequel also nodding in the direction of Jason Voorhees Jason Voorhees. Gwen is guided there by an apparition of her deceased parent and potentially their dead antagonist's original prey while Finn, still trying to handle his fury and newfound ability to fight back, is pursuing to safeguard her. The screenplay is excessively awkward in its forced establishment, awkwardly requiring to leave the brother and sister trapped at a setting that will further contribute to backstories for both main character and enemy, filling in details we didn’t really need or want to know about. Additionally seeming like a more deliberate action to guide the production in the direction of the same church-attending crowds that made the Conjuring series into major blockbusters, the director includes a faith-based component, with virtue now more directly linked with God and heaven while villainy signifies the devil and hell, faith the ultimate weapon against this type of antagonist.

Over-stacked Narrative

What all of this does is continued over-burden a series that was already close to toppling over, adding unnecessary complications to what ought to be a straightforward horror movie. Regularly I noticed excessively engaged in questioning about the methods and reasons of what could or couldn’t happen to experience genuine engagement. It's an undemanding role for Hawke, whose features stay concealed but he possesses genuine presence that’s mostly missing elsewhere in the acting team. The location is at times atmospherically grand but most of the continuously non-terrifying sequences are marred by a grainy 8mm texture to differentiate asleep and awake, an ineffective stylistic choice that feels too self-aware and created to imitate the terrifying uncertainty of being in an actual nightmare.

Unpersuasive Series Justification

At just under 2 hours, the follow-up, like M3gan 2.0 before it, is a unnecessarily lengthy and extremely unpersuasive case for the creation of another series. When it calls again, I recommend not answering.

• The follow-up film debuts in Australian theaters on October 16 and in the US and UK on October 17