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Coming as the re-activated master of horror machine was still churning out screen translations, without concern for excellence, the first installment felt like a lazy fanboy tribute. Featuring a small town 70s backdrop, high school cast, psychic kids and gnarly neighbourhood villain, it was close to pastiche and, like the very worst of 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 King’s son Joe Hill, expanded into a film that was a unexpected blockbuster. It was the narrative about the kidnapper, a sadistic killer of young boys who would enjoy extending the ritual of their deaths. While sexual abuse was avoided in discussion, there was something clearly non-heteronormative about the villain and the historical touchpoints/moral panics he was obviously meant to represent, strengthened by the actor portraying him with a distinctly flamboyant manner. But the film was too vague to ever properly acknowledge this and even excluding that discomfort, it was too busily plotted and overly enamored with its wearisome vileness to work as only an undiscerning sleepover nightmare fuel.

Follow-up Film's Debut During Studio Struggles

The follow-up debuts as former horror hit-makers the studio are in urgent requirement for success. This year they’ve struggled to make any project successful, from Wolf Man to their thriller to their action film to the complete commercial failure of M3gan 2.0, and so a great deal rides on whether the continuation can prove whether a brief narrative can become a motion picture that can generate multiple installments. There’s just one slight problem …

Paranormal Shift

The initial movie finished with our surviving character Finn (the performer) eliminating the villain, supported and coached by the spirits of previous victims. This situation has required director Scott Derrickson and his co-writer C Robert Cargill to advance the story and its antagonist toward fresh territory, turning a flesh and blood villain into a supernatural one, a route that takes them by way of Freddy's domain with an ability to cross back into reality made possible by sleep. But in contrast to the dream killer, the Grabber is clearly unimaginative and totally without wit. The mask remains effectively jarring but the production fails to make him as scary as he temporarily seemed in the first, constrained by complex and typically puzzling guidelines.

Alpine Christian Camp Setting

The protagonist and his annoyingly foul-mouthed sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) confront him anew while stranded due to weather at a mountain religious retreat for kids, the follow-up also referencing toward Freddy’s one-time nemesis the camp slasher. Gwen is guided there by an apparition of her deceased parent and what might be their dead antagonist's original prey while the brother, still attempting to handle his fury and fresh capacity for resistance, is pursuing to safeguard her. The script is excessively awkward in its artificial setup, clumsily needing to leave the brother and sister trapped at a setting that will further contribute to histories of main character and enemy, providing information we weren't particularly interested in or care to learn about. In what also feels like a more strategic decision to edge the film toward the comparable faith-based viewers that turned the Conjuring franchise into huge successes, the director includes a faith-based component, with virtue now more directly linked with God and heaven while evil symbolizes the demonic and punishment, religion the final defense against this type of antagonist.

Overcomplicated Story

The consequence of these choices is additional over-complicate a franchise that was previously almost failing, incorporating needless complexities to what should be a basic scary film. I often found myself overly occupied with inquiries about the hows and whys of possible and impossible events to experience genuine engagement. It’s a low-lift effort for the performer, whose face we never really see but he does have real screen magnetism that’s typically lacking in other aspects in the cast. The location is at times atmospherically grand but the majority of the consistently un-scary set-pieces are marred by a gritty film stock appearance to differentiate asleep and awake, an ineffective stylistic choice that feels too self-aware and constructed to mirror the horrifying unpredictability of being in an actual nightmare.

Unpersuasive Series Justification

Running nearly 120 minutes, the sequel, similar to its predecessor, is a unnecessarily lengthy and hugely unconvincing argument for the birth of another series. If another installment comes, I suggest ignoring it.

• The sequel releases in Australian theaters on October 16 and in America and Britain on the seventeenth of October