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Coming as the resurrected bestselling author machine was persistently generating film versions, regardless of quality, The Black Phone felt like a lazy fanboy tribute. Featuring a retro suburban environment, high school cast, telepathic children and twisted community predator, it was close to pastiche and, similar to the poorest his literary works, it was also awkwardly crowded.

Funnily enough the call came from from the author's own lineage, as it was adapted from a brief tale from the author's offspring, over-extended into a film that was a surprise $161m hit. It was the story of the Grabber, a cruel slayer of children who would take pleasure in prolonging the ritual of their deaths. While assault was avoided in discussion, there was something clearly non-heteronormative about the antagonist and the historical touchpoints/moral panics he was obviously meant to represent, reinforced by Ethan Hawke portraying him with a certain swishy, effeminate flare. But the film was too opaque to ever properly acknowledge this and even aside from that tension, it was too busily plotted and overly enamored with its wearisome vileness to work as anything more than an unthinking horror entertainment.

Follow-up Film's Debut In the Middle of Production Company Challenges

The follow-up debuts as once-dominant genre specialists the studio are in urgent requirement for success. This year they’ve struggled to make any project successful, from the monster movie to The Woman in the Yard to their action film to the total box office disaster of the robotic follow-up, and so much depends on whether Black Phone 2 can prove whether a compact tale can become a movie that can generate multiple installments. But there's a complication …

Paranormal Shift

The first film ended with our protagonist Finn (the young actor) killing the Grabber, supported and coached by the spirits of previous victims. This has compelled filmmaker Derrickson and his collaborator C Robert Cargill to move the franchise and its villain in a different direction, transforming a human antagonist into a paranormal entity, a direction that guides them via Elm Street with a power to travel into the physical realm facilitated by dreams. But different from the striped sweater villain, the Grabber is clearly unimaginative and entirely devoid of humour. The facial covering continues to be appropriately unsettling but the production fails to make him as scary as he temporarily seemed in the initial film, trapped by complicated and frequently unclear regulations.

Snowy Religious Environment

Finn and his frustratingly crude sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) encounter him again while snowed in at a mountain religious retreat for kids, the follow-up also referencing regarding the hockey mask killer the Friday the 13th antagonist. Gwen is guided there by a ghostly image of her dead mother and what could be their dead antagonist's original prey while the brother, still attempting to deal with his rage and newfound ability to fight back, is following so he can protect her. The script is too ungainly in its contrived scene-setting, inelegantly demanding to maroon the main characters at a setting that will further contribute to histories of hero and villain, filling in details we didn’t really need or desire to understand. What also appears to be a more strategic decision to guide the production in the direction of the similar religious audiences that transformed the Conjuring movies into major blockbusters, the director includes a religious element, with morality now more strongly connected with the creator and the afterlife while evil symbolizes the demonic and punishment, religion the final defense against a monster like this.

Over-stacked Narrative

The consequence of these choices is continued over-burden a story that was formerly close to toppling over, adding unnecessary complications to what ought to be a basic scary film. I often found myself too busy asking questions about the processes and motivations of possible and impossible events to feel all that involved. It's an undemanding role for the actor, whose visage remains hidden but he maintains genuine presence that’s generally absent in other areas in the acting team. The setting is at times atmospherically grand but most of the persistently unfrightening scenes are marred by a gritty film stock appearance to separate sleep states from consciousness, an ineffective stylistic choice that feels too self-aware and constructed to mirror the horrifying unpredictability of living through a genuine night terror.

Weak Continuation Rationale

Running nearly 120 minutes, Black Phone 2, like M3gan 2.0 before it, is a excessively extended and highly implausible argument for the birth of a new franchise. If another installment comes, I advise letting it go to voicemail.

• The sequel debuts in Australia's movie houses on October 16 and in the US and UK on October 17