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Coming as the resurrected bestselling author machine was continuing to produce adaptations, regardless of quality, the first installment felt like a lazy fanboy tribute. With its small town 70s backdrop, young performers, telepathic children and disturbing local antagonist, it was almost imitation and, comparable to the weakest his literary works, it was also awkwardly crowded.

Curiously the inspiration originated from inside the family home, as it was based on a short story from King’s son Joe Hill, over-extended into a film that was a unexpected blockbuster. 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 avoided in discussion, there was something unmistakably LGBTQ-suggestive about the antagonist and the era-specific anxieties he was obviously meant to represent, strengthened by Ethan Hawke portraying him with a certain swishy, effeminate flare. But the film was too vague to ever fully embrace this aspect and even aside from that tension, it was overly complicated and too focused on 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. Recently they've faced challenges to make any project successful, from Wolf Man to the suspense story to their action film to the complete commercial failure of the AI sequel, and so significant pressure rests 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 …

Paranormal Shift

The initial movie finished with our surviving character Finn (the performer) killing the Grabber, helped and guided by the spirits of previous victims. It’s forced filmmaker Derrickson and his collaborator C Robert Cargill to take the series and its villain in a different direction, turning a flesh and blood villain into a ghostly presence, a path that leads them through Nightmare on Elm Street with an ability to cross back into reality facilitated by dreams. But in contrast to the dream killer, the Grabber is noticeably uncreative and entirely devoid of humour. The facial covering continues to be appropriately unsettling but the film struggles to make him as terrifying as he temporarily seemed in the initial film, constrained by convoluted and often confusing rules.

Mountain Retreat Location

Finn and his irritatingly profane sibling Gwen (the actress) confront him anew while stranded due to weather at an alpine Christian camp for kids, the follow-up also referencing toward Freddy’s one-time nemesis Jason Voorhees. Gwen is guided there by a vision of her late mother and potentially their late tormenter’s first victims while the protagonist, continuing to handle his fury and newfound ability to fight back, is following so he can protect her. The script is overly clumsy in its forced establishment, awkwardly requiring to maroon the main characters at a place that will also add to backstories for both protagonist and antagonist, filling in details we didn’t really need or desire to understand. Additionally seeming like a more strategic decision to edge the film toward the similar religious audiences that turned the Conjuring franchise into massive hits, the filmmaker incorporates a spiritual aspect, with good now more closely associated with the divine and paradise while villainy signifies Satan and damnation, faith the ultimate weapon against such a creature.

Overloaded Plot

The result of these decisions is continued over-burden a story that was formerly close to toppling over, incorporating needless complexities to what could have been a simple Friday night engine. I often found myself too busy asking questions about the hows and whys of what could or couldn’t happen to become truly immersed. It's minimal work for the actor, whose face we never really see but he maintains authentic charisma that’s typically lacking in other aspects in the acting team. The environment is at times impressively atmospheric but the majority of the persistently unfrightening scenes are marred by a grainy 8mm texture to separate sleep states from consciousness, an poor directorial selection that seems excessively meta and designed to reflect the frightening randomness of being in an actual nightmare.

Unpersuasive Series Justification

At just under 2 hours, the follow-up, like M3gan 2.0 before it, is a needlessly long and highly implausible argument for the birth of another series. The next time it rings, I recommend not answering.

• Black Phone 2 is out in Australian cinemas on the sixteenth of October and in the US and UK on October 17