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Debuting as the re-activated master of horror machine was persistently generating film versions, quality be damned, The Black Phone felt like a uninspired homage. Featuring a small town 70s backdrop, teenage actors, psychic kids and gnarly neighbourhood villain, it was close to pastiche and, similar to the poorest King’s stories, it was also awkwardly crowded.

Interestingly the inspiration originated from within the household, as it was based on a short story from his descendant, expanded into a film that was a surprise $161m hit. It was the narrative about the kidnapper, a sadistic killer of young boys who would revel in elongating their fatal ceremony. While assault was never mentioned, there was something clearly non-heteronormative about the antagonist and the era-specific anxieties he was intended to symbolize, emphasized by Ethan Hawke playing him with a certain swishy, effeminate flare. But the film was too ambiguous to ever fully embrace this aspect and even aside from that tension, it was too busily plotted and too high on its wearisome vileness to work as only an unthinking horror entertainment.

Second Installment's Release Amidst Studio Struggles

The next chapter comes as former horror hit-makers the studio are in desperate need of a win. Lately they've encountered difficulties to make any project successful, from their werewolf film to the suspense story to Drop to the total box office disaster of the AI sequel, and so much depends on whether Black Phone 2 can prove whether a short story can become a movie that can generate multiple installments. But there's a complication …

Paranormal Shift

The initial movie finished with our Final Boy Finn (the performer) killing the Grabber, helped and guided by the ghosts of those he had killed before. This has compelled writer-director Scott Derrickson and his collaborator C Robert Cargill to move the franchise and its villain in a different direction, transforming a human antagonist into a ghostly presence, a route that takes them through Nightmare on Elm Street with a power to travel into reality enabled through nightmares. But different from the striped sweater villain, the Grabber is noticeably uncreative and totally without wit. The disguise stays effectively jarring but the film struggles to make him as frightening as he momentarily appeared in the first, constrained by complex and typically puzzling guidelines.

Alpine Christian Camp Setting

The main character and his irritatingly profane sibling 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 Friday the 13th antagonist. The sister is directed there by a ghostly image of her dead mother and potentially their dead antagonist's original prey while the brother, still attempting to process his anger and fresh capacity for resistance, is pursuing to safeguard her. The writing is excessively awkward in its forced establishment, awkwardly requiring to get the siblings stranded at a place that will also add to histories of main character and enemy, supplying particulars we didn’t really need or care to learn about. In what also feels like a more strategic decision to guide the production in the direction of the similar religious audiences that turned the Conjuring franchise into massive hits, Derrickson adds a faith-based component, with good now more closely associated with God and heaven while villainy signifies Satan and damnation, religion the final defense against such a creature.

Overcomplicated Story

What all of this does is continued over-burden a franchise that was previously close to toppling over, incorporating needless complexities to what should be a straightforward horror movie. I often found myself too busy asking questions about the methods and reasons of feasible and unfeasible occurrences to become truly immersed. It's an undemanding role for Hawke, whose visage remains hidden but he does have authentic charisma that’s mostly missing elsewhere in the cast. The location is at times impressively atmospheric but most of the consistently un-scary set-pieces are flawed by a rough cinematic quality to distinguish dreaming from waking, an unsuccessful artistic decision that appears overly conscious and created to imitate the horrifying unpredictability of living through a genuine night terror.

Unconvincing Franchise Argument

Lasting approximately two hours, Black Phone 2, similar to its predecessor, is a needlessly long and highly implausible argument for the birth of another series. If another installment comes, I advise letting it go to voicemail.

• The sequel is out in Australia's movie houses on October 16 and in the US and UK on the seventeenth of October