There's been a bit of a horror renaissance recently. This isn't part of it.
Pretty scary in places but relies on the jump-scare too much and uses too many horror tropes to offer anything new. While the first film had some interesting elements, this series has become too vein. It loves itself, thinks it's really clever and that it's leading the pack. But in reality it makes little sense because a lot of it is forgettable. I had to look up the stuff it was referencing from the other films because it's all so tenuous and everything is too similar to each other. What's worse is it's a prequel, so really the stuff set in the future should have little or no barring on this. Besides, we know what happens to some of these characters from the other films so why should we care when they're in danger? Isn't that the point of a horror film?
But it's cool to see an older woman kick some ghost butt and school everyone else.