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Coming as the revived bestselling author machine was persistently generating screen translations, without concern for excellence, the first installment felt like a uninspired homage. With its 1970s small town setting, high school cast, gifted youths and twisted community predator, it was close to pastiche and, similar to the poorest King’s stories, it was also clumsily packed.

Curiously the inspiration originated from from the author's own lineage, as it was inspired by a compact narrative from King’s son Joe Hill, expanded into a film that was a unexpected blockbuster. It was the narrative about the kidnapper, a cruel slayer of children who would take pleasure in prolonging the process of killing. While assault was not referenced, there was something clearly non-heteronormative about the character and the period references/societal fears he was intended to symbolize, emphasized by the performer acting with a certain swishy, effeminate flare. But the film was too ambiguous to ever fully embrace this aspect and even without that uneasiness, it was too busily plotted and too focused on its wearisome vileness to work as anything more than an unthinking horror entertainment.

Second Installment's Release During Studio Struggles

The follow-up debuts as previous scary movie successes the production company are in desperate need of a win. Lately they've encountered difficulties to make anything work, from Wolf Man to The Woman in the Yard to their action film to the complete commercial failure of M3gan 2.0, and so much depends on whether Black Phone 2 can prove whether a compact tale can become a film that can spawn a franchise. But there's a complication …

Paranormal Shift

The original concluded with our surviving character Finn (the young actor) killing the Grabber, assisted and trained by the apparitions of earlier casualties. This has compelled filmmaker Derrickson and his writing partner Cargill to move the franchise and its villain in a different direction, converting a physical threat into a paranormal entity, a route that takes them by way of Freddy's domain with a power to travel into the real world facilitated by dreams. But unlike Freddy Krueger, the Grabber is markedly uninventive and totally without wit. The mask remains successfully disturbing but the film struggles to make him as frightening as he briefly was in the first, limited by complex and typically puzzling guidelines.

Mountain Retreat Location

The main character and his annoyingly foul-mouthed sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) face him once more while snowed in at an alpine Christian camp for kids, the second film also acknowledging regarding the hockey mask killer Jason Voorhees. The sister is directed there by a ghostly image of her dead mother and potentially their late tormenter’s first victims while Finn, still trying to deal with his rage and recently discovered defensive skills, is following so he can protect her. The screenplay is excessively awkward in its artificial setup, awkwardly requiring to get the siblings stranded at a location that will additionally provide to backstories for both protagonist and antagonist, providing information we weren't particularly interested in or desire to understand. What also appears to be a more strategic decision to push the movie towards the same church-attending crowds that turned the Conjuring franchise into massive hits, the filmmaker incorporates a religious element, with morality now more strongly connected with God and heaven while bad represents Satan and damnation, faith the ultimate weapon against such a creature.

Overloaded Plot

What all of this does is additional over-complicate a series that was already almost failing, adding unnecessary complications to what should be a straightforward horror movie. I often found myself too busy asking questions about the processes and motivations of what could or couldn’t happen to become truly immersed. It's minimal work for the actor, whose face we never really see but he maintains genuine presence that’s typically lacking in other aspects in the cast. The location is at times impressively atmospheric but the bulk of the continuously non-terrifying sequences are marred by a grainy 8mm texture to differentiate asleep and awake, an ineffective stylistic choice that seems excessively meta and designed to reflect the frightening randomness of being in an actual nightmare.

Unpersuasive Series Justification

Running nearly 120 minutes, the follow-up, comparable to earlier failures, is a needlessly long and hugely unconvincing argument for the birth of an additional film universe. When it calls again, I advise letting it go to voicemail.

• The sequel is out in Australian theaters on October 16 and in the United States and United Kingdom on the seventeenth of October