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Debuting as the revived bestselling author machine was still churning out adaptations, regardless of quality, the first installment felt like a uninspired homage. Set against a small town 70s backdrop, high school cast, psychic kids and twisted community predator, it was nearly parody and, comparable to the weakest his literary works, it was also inelegantly overstuffed.

Interestingly the call came from from the author's own lineage, as it was inspired by a compact narrative from King’s son Joe Hill, over-extended into a film that was a surprise $161m hit. It was the narrative about the kidnapper, a sadistic killer of adolescents who would enjoy extending the process of killing. While molestation was not referenced, there was something clearly non-heteronormative about the character and the era-specific anxieties he was intended to symbolize, strengthened by the actor portraying him with a noticeably camp style. But the film was too opaque to ever really admit that and even without that uneasiness, it was excessively convoluted and too high on its tiring griminess to work as anything beyond an unthinking horror entertainment.

The Sequel's Arrival Amidst Studio Struggles

The next chapter comes as previous scary movie successes the studio are in critical demand for a hit. Lately they've encountered difficulties to make any project successful, from their werewolf film to their thriller 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 brief narrative can become a motion picture that can generate multiple installments. However, there's an issue …

Supernatural Transformation

The first film ended with our protagonist Finn (the young actor) eliminating the villain, supported and coached by the ghosts of those he had killed before. It’s forced writer-director Scott Derrickson and his collaborator C Robert Cargill to advance the story and its antagonist toward fresh territory, transforming a human antagonist into a paranormal entity, a direction that guides them by way of Freddy's domain with a power to travel into the real world enabled through nightmares. But unlike Freddy Krueger, the antagonist is clearly unimaginative and entirely devoid of humour. The mask remains successfully disturbing but the film struggles to make him as frightening as he briefly was in the initial film, trapped by convoluted and often confusing rules.

Alpine Christian Camp Setting

The main character and his irritatingly profane sibling Gwen (the performer) face him once more while trapped by snow at a high-altitude faith-based facility for kids, the follow-up also referencing in the direction of Jason Voorhees Jason Voorhees. The female lead is led there by a vision of her late mother and potentially their late tormenter’s first victims while Finn, still trying to process his anger and recently discovered defensive skills, is following so he can protect her. The writing is overly clumsy in its artificial setup, inelegantly demanding to leave the brother and sister trapped at a setting that will further contribute to histories of hero and villain, filling in details we weren't particularly interested in or desire to understand. In what also feels like a more deliberate action to guide the production in the direction of the comparable faith-based viewers that transformed the Conjuring movies into huge successes, the director includes a faith-based component, with good now more closely associated with God and heaven while evil symbolizes Satan and damnation, faith the ultimate weapon against such a creature.

Over-stacked Narrative

The result of these decisions is additional over-complicate a series that was already nearly collapsing, including superfluous difficulties to what should be a simple Friday night engine. Frequently I discovered too busy asking questions about the hows and whys of feasible and unfeasible occurrences to feel all that involved. It's minimal work for Hawke, whose face we never really see but he does have genuine presence that’s generally absent in other areas in the cast. The location is at times atmospherically grand but the majority of the consistently un-scary set-pieces are marred by a grainy 8mm texture to distinguish dreaming from waking, an poor directorial selection that seems excessively meta and constructed to mirror the terrifying uncertainty of living through a genuine night terror.

Unconvincing Franchise Argument

At just under 2 hours, Black Phone 2, comparable to earlier failures, is a needlessly long and highly implausible argument for the birth of a new franchise. If another installment comes, I advise letting it go to voicemail.

• The follow-up film is out in Australia's movie houses on the sixteenth of October and in America and Britain on 17 October