Halloween Kills

I really enjoyed Halloween, the 2018 direct sequel to the original movie, so I was looking forward to the next installment, Halloween Kills.  I saw it last night and, normally, seeing a horror movie on a Friday night in October with a large crowd is a lot of fun but this movie is an absolute mess and I left the theater disappointed.  Immediately after the events of Halloween, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is taken away from her burning compound to the hospital to treat the stab wound in her abdomen by her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak).  Meanwhile, firefighters inadvertently free Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney) from the basement where he was trapped by Strode and he goes on a brutal rampage through the town of Haddonfield.  Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), one of the children Strode was babysitting during the attacks on Halloween in 1978, is celebrating with several other survivors when he hears of Myers' return and vows to kill him once and for all.  He organizes a large mob, including the other survivors and Allyson, and they cause the death of an escaped convict, mistakenly believed to be Myers, before forcing a confrontation with Myers at his childhood home.  This movie is incredibly violent and gruesome, especially when Myers kills a firefighter with a chainsaw, but I would rather be genuinely scared than shocked (the tension, not the body count, is what made the original movie so scary).  I really enjoyed the exploration of Strode's PTSD in the last movie but her story is sidelined in this one in favor of Deputy Hawkins (Will Patton) and his guilt over not killing Myers when he had the chance in 1978 (in some revisionist flashbacks) and a heavy-handed message about mob mentality and the danger of becoming as morally depraved as the monster you seek.  Bringing back several characters from the original movie seems like a good idea in theory but it really just serves to emphasize the sheer stupidity of some their actions.  These characters have dealt with Myers before so they should know better than to approach him with just a pillowcase full of rocks or a baseball bat.  There are some weird tonal shifts, particularly the truly bizarre scenes involving the new owners of Myers' former home.  The dialogue is cringe-worthy, the acting is surprisingly bad, the editing is confusing, especially the slow-motion mob scene at the hospital, and the plot goes nowhere.  Honestly, I feel like this is just a set-up for the next movie and I recommend giving it a miss.