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Debuting as the revived master of horror machine was still churning out film versions, quality be damned, the first installment felt like a uninspired homage. Featuring a retro suburban environment, young performers, psychic kids and twisted community predator, it was nearly parody and, comparable to the weakest King’s stories, it was also clumsily packed.

Interestingly the source was found from the author's own lineage, as it was inspired by a compact narrative from the author's offspring, stretched into a film that was a surprise $161m hit. It was the tale of the antagonist, a cruel slayer of young boys who would revel in elongating the process of killing. While assault was not referenced, there was something unmistakably LGBTQ-suggestive about the antagonist and the era-specific anxieties he was obviously meant to represent, reinforced by the actor portraying him with a noticeably camp style. But the film was too ambiguous to ever fully embrace this aspect and even excluding that discomfort, it was too busily plotted and too high on its tiring griminess to work as anything beyond an mindless scary movie material.

Second Installment's Release During Filmmaking Difficulties

The follow-up debuts as former horror hit-makers the studio are in urgent requirement for success. Lately they've encountered difficulties to make anything work, from the monster movie to the suspense story to their action film to the utter financial disappointment of M3gan 2.0, and so much depends on whether the continuation can prove whether a short story can become a film that can spawn a franchise. There’s just one slight problem …

Ghostly Evolution

The initial movie finished with our Final Boy Finn (the performer) eliminating the villain, helped and guided by the apparitions of earlier casualties. This has compelled filmmaker Derrickson and his writing partner Cargill to take the series and its antagonist toward fresh territory, converting a physical threat into a ghostly presence, a path that leads them via Elm Street with a power to travel into the physical realm facilitated by dreams. But unlike Freddy Krueger, the villain is markedly uninventive and entirely devoid of humour. The facial covering continues to be effectively jarring but the movie has difficulty to make him as frightening as he momentarily appeared in the original, trapped by convoluted and often confusing rules.

Alpine Christian Camp Setting

The main character and his frustratingly crude sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) encounter him again while trapped by snow at a mountain religious retreat for kids, the sequel also nodding regarding the hockey mask killer the Friday the 13th antagonist. The sister is directed there by a vision of her late mother and what could be their dead antagonist's original prey while the protagonist, continuing to deal with his rage and newfound ability to fight back, is tracking to defend her. The screenplay is excessively awkward in its artificial setup, awkwardly requiring to get the siblings stranded at a setting that will further contribute to background information for main character and enemy, providing information we weren't particularly interested in or care to learn about. 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 director includes a spiritual aspect, with morality now more strongly connected with the divine and paradise while villainy signifies the demonic and punishment, belief the supreme tool against such a creature.

Overloaded Plot

The result of these decisions is continued over-burden a story that was formerly close to toppling over, including superfluous difficulties to what could have been a basic scary film. Frequently I discovered excessively engaged in questioning about the hows and whys of possible and impossible events to become truly immersed. It's minimal work for the actor, whose features stay concealed but he maintains authentic charisma that’s mostly missing elsewhere in the acting team. The location is at times remarkably immersive but most of the consistently un-scary set-pieces are flawed by a gritty film stock appearance to differentiate asleep and awake, an unsuccessful artistic decision that seems excessively meta and constructed to mirror the terrifying uncertainty of living through a genuine night terror.

Weak Continuation Rationale

Lasting approximately two hours, the follow-up, like M3gan 2.0 before it, is a needlessly long and hugely unconvincing justification for the establishment of an additional film universe. If another installment comes, I recommend not answering.

• Black Phone 2 is out in Australia's movie houses on October 16 and in the United States and United Kingdom on 17 October