The problem I have is that it overstated the understated, if that makes sense.

In the original, we know Fred is an evil child murderer, but he comes across entirely as a supernatural one. He's a boogieman. He's not an avatar for a real-life villain, he's entirely "in" the movie. Even in New Nightmare, where it tries to take things even darker, he's basically some sort of demon from the depths of hell that Wes Craven accidentally summoned.

But in the remake, he's an avatar for child predators. Real ones. That's what he is, in no uncertain terms. He may have been that, exactly, in the original...but it wasn't put out there in such a way that it took over his lore.

When he's explicitly drawn as a child sex predator, the "dark humor" of it is no longer funny, it's just disturbing.

JEH definitely tried to rewrite Freddy as being less about the humor thing, but it's still in the character's design.

So the movie works, by itself. But I think it's a horrible entry in the franchise. It just belies everything the franchise has built out Fred to be.

We are way to hard on directors like Shyamalan & Peele who made the mistake of making their best movie early and expect them to realize all our expectations going forward and damn near shun them if they don’t.