Black Phone 2 in 200 Words or Less

I suppose if forced to choose I'd rather be bored than offended, so I guess Black Phone 2 is better than Black Phone in that it's not quite so rigorously homophobic this time out. Otherwise -- shrug emoji? I swear the first hour of this sequel is the same scene played out several times in a row. Little sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) -- who's very much the protagonist this time out -- slips into a dream, a phone rings, ghost kids, wakes up, little more dream, longer ringing phone, more ghost kids, on and on and on until your eyes have rolled down your throat. I don't recall the sound of a ringing phone being quite so annoying in the first film -- it's absolutely relentless here. Call it "Won't somebody answer the goddamned phone???": The Movie. And I've said this before when it comes to Scott Derrickson's movies (re: Sinister) but I will never find Ghost Kids scary. Ghost Kids will never be scary! There's some fun Elm-Street-esque shenanigans in the last half but having re-watched Dream Warriors earlier this week if you can't have a character say "In my dreams I'm beautiful and bad!" then bzzzt, you lose the contest.