Question: When the girls realize that cellphone signals are available at the base of the tower, why can't they fly the drone down with the cellphone as a load? Is the payload too heavy?
Question: Why can Liv McKenzie not go to see Tara Carpenter, her co-worker/close friend after her near-murder attack? Her absence is done to draw suspicion on her, but as she is later revealed to not be the killer, the question is left unanswered in the film. (00:15:45)
Answer: To try to throw them off the scent and add suspicion to make us think maybe possibly they're the killer(s).
This answer is literally part of the question. The question mentions that this was done to make the character seem suspicious. The question was asking why, in the context of the film, can't Liv go to see Tara. Not why in a behind-the-scenes sense.
Answer: It's never explained in the film, so any answer would be pure speculation. As you said, it was obviously done to draw suspicion onto her by the filmmakers, but there's any number of reasons she might not be able to, so really it's a case of picking your poison. (Perhaps she had a previous appointment she couldn't miss, perhaps she has a family matter to attend to, etc).
Question: Why would the town turn on Laurie and accuse her of provoking Michael's attacks when she was a victim and spent almost the entire time in the hospital?
Answer: Michael's primary target is Laurie but, since he's also going around killing random people, most likely everybody believes that Michael is killing anybody who gets in his way to get to Laurie.
Answer: Because the town, Haddonfield, needed someone, anyone, to blame, and Laurie, being that she survived both the '78 killings and then the 2018 massacre, was likely the only viable choice.
Question: At the beginning, what were the cops looking at in the basement that was so bad? As far as I recall, there was just the dead guy chained to the wall, and possibly Jenna Ortega's body. Neither of which seem any more messed up than the bodies the cops already covered up.
Answer: They don't have the backpack at that time?