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Coming as the revived master of horror machine was continuing to produce adaptations, without concern for excellence, The Black Phone felt like a uninspired homage. Featuring a retro suburban environment, teenage actors, psychic kids and twisted community predator, it was almost imitation and, like the very worst of his literary works, it was also inelegantly overstuffed.

Funnily enough the inspiration originated from from the author's own lineage, as it was inspired by a compact narrative from his descendant, expanded into a film that was a shocking commercial success. It was the narrative about the kidnapper, a sadistic killer 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 period references/societal fears he was intended to symbolize, emphasized by Ethan Hawke acting with a noticeably camp style. But the film was too vague to ever fully embrace this aspect and even aside from that tension, it was too busily plotted and too focused on its exhaustingly grubby nastiness to work as anything beyond an undiscerning sleepover nightmare fuel.

The Sequel's Arrival In the Middle of Studio Struggles

Its sequel arrives as previous scary movie successes the studio are in urgent requirement for success. Recently they've faced challenges to make anything work, from Wolf Man to The Woman in the Yard to the adventure movie to the total box office disaster of the robotic follow-up, and so much depends on whether the continuation can prove whether a short story can become a movie that can create a series. There’s just one slight problem …

Supernatural Transformation

The original concluded with our protagonist Finn (Mason Thames) eliminating the villain, supported and coached by the spirits of previous victims. It’s forced writer-director Scott Derrickson and his co-writer C Robert Cargill to take the series and its killer to a new place, transforming a human antagonist into a ghostly presence, a route that takes them through Nightmare on Elm Street with a capability to return into reality enabled through nightmares. But different from the striped sweater villain, the Grabber is noticeably uncreative and completely lacking comedy. The facial covering continues to be appropriately unsettling but the movie has difficulty to make him as terrifying as he temporarily seemed in the original, constrained by complex and typically puzzling guidelines.

Snowy Religious Environment

The main character and his irritatingly profane sibling Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) confront him anew while snowed in 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 vision of her late mother and what might be their deceased villain's initial casualties while Finn, still trying to process his anger and recently discovered defensive skills, is pursuing to safeguard her. The screenplay is excessively awkward in its contrived scene-setting, clumsily needing to get the siblings stranded at a location that will additionally provide to background information for main character and enemy, providing information we weren't particularly interested in or want to know about. In what also feels like a more strategic decision to edge the film toward the similar religious audiences that made the Conjuring series into major blockbusters, Derrickson adds a spiritual aspect, with morality now more strongly connected with the creator and the afterlife while bad represents the devil and hell, religion the final defense against such a creature.

Over-stacked Narrative

The consequence of these choices is additional over-complicate a series that was already close to toppling over, adding unnecessary complications to what ought to be a straightforward horror movie. I often found myself excessively engaged in questioning about the hows and whys of what could or couldn’t happen to become truly immersed. It's an undemanding role for Hawke, whose visage remains hidden but he maintains real screen magnetism that’s typically lacking in other aspects in the cast. The environment is at times remarkably immersive but the bulk of the persistently unfrightening scenes are damaged by a gritty film stock appearance to separate sleep states from consciousness, an poor directorial selection that appears overly conscious and created to imitate the frightening randomness of living through a genuine night terror.

Unconvincing Franchise Argument

Running nearly 120 minutes, the follow-up, similar to its predecessor, is a unnecessarily lengthy and extremely unpersuasive justification for the establishment of a new franchise. The next time it rings, I advise letting it go to voicemail.

• The sequel releases in Australian theaters on October 16 and in America and Britain on 17 October