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Debuting as the revived Stephen King machine was persistently generating adaptations, quality be damned, The Black Phone felt like a lazy fanboy tribute. Featuring a small town 70s backdrop, teenage actors, telepathic children and twisted community predator, it was nearly parody and, similar to the poorest the author's tales, it was also awkwardly crowded.

Funnily enough the inspiration originated from inside the family home, as it was inspired by a compact narrative from his descendant, expanded into a film that was a shocking commercial success. It was the story of the Grabber, a brutal murderer of children who would take pleasure in prolonging the process of killing. While assault was never mentioned, there was something clearly non-heteronormative about the character and the period references/societal fears he was obviously meant to represent, strengthened by the performer acting with a certain swishy, effeminate flare. But the film was too vague to ever fully embrace this aspect and even without that uneasiness, it was too busily plotted and too high on its wearisome vileness to work as only an mindless scary movie material.

Follow-up Film's Debut Amidst Production Company Challenges

Its sequel arrives as former horror hit-makers the studio are in urgent requirement for success. Recently they've faced challenges to make anything work, 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 the continuation can prove whether a compact tale can become a movie that can spawn a franchise. However, there's an issue …

Ghostly Evolution

The first film ended with our surviving character Finn (the young actor) killing the Grabber, helped and guided by the spirits of previous victims. It’s forced writer-director Scott Derrickson and his writing partner Cargill to move the franchise and its killer to a new place, transforming a human antagonist into a supernatural one, a direction that guides them through Nightmare on Elm Street with a capability to return into the real world facilitated by dreams. But unlike Freddy Krueger, the Grabber is noticeably uncreative and totally without wit. The disguise stays appropriately unsettling but the film struggles to make him as frightening as he momentarily appeared in the original, limited by complex and typically puzzling guidelines.

Mountain Retreat Location

Finn and his frustratingly crude sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) face him once more while stranded due to weather at an alpine Christian camp for kids, the follow-up also referencing regarding the hockey mask killer Jason Voorhees. The female lead is led there by an apparition of her deceased parent and what could be their deceased villain's initial casualties while the brother, still attempting to handle his fury and recently discovered defensive skills, is following so he can protect her. The writing is excessively awkward in its forced establishment, clumsily needing to maroon the main characters at a location that will additionally provide to background information for hero and villain, supplying particulars we didn’t really need or care to learn about. Additionally seeming like a more calculated move to push the movie towards the comparable faith-based viewers that transformed the Conjuring movies into major blockbusters, Derrickson adds a spiritual aspect, with morality now more strongly connected with the divine and paradise while evil symbolizes the devil and hell, faith the ultimate weapon against a monster like this.

Over-stacked Narrative

The result of these decisions is continued over-burden a story that was formerly almost failing, adding unnecessary complications to what ought to be a straightforward horror movie. I often found myself excessively engaged in questioning about the methods and reasons of feasible and unfeasible occurrences to feel all that involved. It's minimal work for the actor, whose features stay concealed but he possesses genuine presence that’s typically lacking in other aspects in the acting team. The setting is at times remarkably immersive but the bulk of the persistently unfrightening scenes are marred by a grainy 8mm texture to distinguish dreaming from waking, an poor directorial selection that feels too self-aware and designed to reflect the terrifying uncertainty of being in an actual nightmare.

Unpersuasive Series Justification

Lasting approximately two hours, the sequel, similar to its predecessor, is a needlessly long and highly implausible justification for the establishment of an additional film universe. The next time it rings, I recommend not answering.

• Black Phone 2 is out in Australian cinemas on 16 October and in the US and UK on the seventeenth of October