My girlfriend and I own all of the movies in this series, and this one gets the second-most playtime in our house, after Part 6: Jason Lives. While that one is really funny, this one is mostly serious, and builds up the tension nicely before giving us the kills. Everything they changed is well-done, and they kept enough of the essential elements (even the humor, despite what I just said!) that it really feels like the culmination of efforts to put together a really good Jason movie.
However, the "Nightmare on Elm Street" reboot, done by the same production company, was not so good. I thought the idea of Freddy being actually innocent was brilliant, but then they said "nope, he's even worse than we thought!" What if they'd run with that idea -- that Freddy was an innocent man who was killed by a mob in once of the worst ways imaginable, and was taking revenge on them? It would have been a stark statement about mob violence, and the way that suburban life leads to a distrust of outsiders. But no, it tripped, fell, and just led to massive disappointment.