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Coming as the revived Stephen King machine was persistently generating adaptations, regardless of quality, The Black Phone felt like a uninspired homage. With its retro suburban environment, young performers, gifted youths and twisted community predator, it was nearly parody and, comparable to the weakest the author's tales, it was also inelegantly overstuffed.

Interestingly the inspiration originated from from the author's own lineage, as it was adapted from a brief tale from his descendant, expanded into a film that was a unexpected blockbuster. It was the story of the Grabber, a cruel slayer of adolescents who would take pleasure in prolonging the process of killing. While molestation was not referenced, there was something clearly non-heteronormative about the villain and the era-specific anxieties he was obviously meant to represent, emphasized by Ethan Hawke playing him with a distinctly flamboyant manner. But the film was too vague to ever fully embrace this aspect and even aside from that tension, it was excessively convoluted and too high on its tiring griminess to work as anything more than an undiscerning sleepover nightmare fuel.

The Sequel's Arrival Amidst Studio Struggles

Its sequel arrives as former horror hit-makers the studio are in critical demand for a hit. Lately they've encountered difficulties to make any project successful, from their werewolf film to The Woman in the Yard to their action film to the total box office disaster of M3gan 2.0, and so a great deal rides on whether the continuation can prove whether a brief narrative can become a movie that can create a series. But there's a complication …

Paranormal Shift

The original concluded with our Final Boy Finn (the performer) killing the Grabber, assisted and trained by the apparitions of earlier casualties. This situation has required director Scott Derrickson and his collaborator C Robert Cargill to take the series and its killer to a new place, transforming a human antagonist into a ghostly presence, a path that leads them by way of Freddy's domain with a capability to return into the physical realm facilitated by dreams. But in contrast to the dream killer, the antagonist is markedly uninventive and totally without wit. The disguise stays successfully disturbing but the film struggles to make him as frightening as he briefly was in the initial film, constrained by convoluted and often confusing rules.

Mountain Retreat Location

The protagonist and his annoyingly foul-mouthed sister Gwen (the actress) confront him anew while trapped by snow at a high-altitude faith-based facility for kids, the follow-up also referencing regarding the hockey mask killer Jason Voorhees. Gwen is guided there by a ghostly image of her dead mother and potentially their late tormenter’s first victims while the protagonist, continuing to deal with his rage and recently discovered defensive skills, is tracking to defend her. The screenplay is excessively awkward in its contrived scene-setting, inelegantly demanding to leave the brother and sister trapped at a location that will additionally provide to background information for hero and villain, providing information we weren't particularly interested in or desire to understand. What also appears to be a more deliberate action to edge the film toward the same church-attending crowds that made the Conjuring series into huge successes, Derrickson adds a spiritual aspect, with morality now more strongly connected with the divine and paradise while bad represents the devil and hell, religion the final defense against such a creature.

Overcomplicated Story

The result of these decisions is further over-stack a series that was already almost failing, adding unnecessary complications to what should be a basic scary film. Regularly I noticed overly occupied with inquiries about the hows and whys of what could or couldn’t happen to become truly immersed. It's minimal work for the actor, whose visage remains hidden but he does have authentic charisma that’s typically lacking in other aspects in the ensemble. The setting is at times remarkably immersive but the majority of the consistently un-scary set-pieces are flawed by a grainy 8mm texture to distinguish dreaming from waking, an ineffective stylistic choice that seems excessively meta and created to imitate the horrifying unpredictability of experiencing a real bad dream.

Unconvincing Franchise Argument

Lasting approximately two hours, the follow-up, like M3gan 2.0 before it, is a needlessly long and extremely unpersuasive justification for the establishment of another series. If another installment comes, I advise letting it go to voicemail.

• The follow-up film is out in Australian cinemas on October 16 and in the United States and United Kingdom on October 17