“This seems to be the point where they pushed the connection to the original movie to its breaking point and then a tad further. Which is a thing horror franchises do: We have an initial success, a successful sequel, and then as we get further down the road, we don’t hit that point of, “Okay, we need to create a new jumpoff to make this movie interesting because at some point, when we’re talking to Sydney’s great aunt’s third nephew in law, we’ve gone too far outside characters anyone cares about.”
Or, at least, you have to do that until it’s been a long enough break between movies that you can get away with a reboot, 25 years have passed in real time and movie time, and you can kinda just do the same thing again, but throw in, I don’t know, a Trump metaphor or whatever.”