Jeff the Killer (Remake)

Jeff the Killer 2015 is a remake of the popular creepypasta of the same name written by K. Banning Kellum, following Jeffrey Woods and the actions of his family and himself that lead to his descent into insanity.

Plot
Jeffrey Woods and his family arrive at their new home in Mandeville. While Jeff and his brother Liu struggle to adjust to this new life, a chance encounter with the children of a rich and powerful group slowly set off events into motion with horrifying results.

Why it Rocks

 * 1) Creepypastas are often notorious for being amateurish and controversial, but this one does the exact opposite of that, completely revamping the story and characters to actually be readable and enjoyable to multiple groups.
 * 2) As mentioned before, while Jeff was pretty much a stereotypical knife-wielding maniac in the original, this one makes him a much more believable and relatable character by completely taking away his overpowered nature and making his descent into insanity much more prolonged, well-paced, and believable. This time, he's given a pretty good reason for the heinous crimes he commits while also being given an actual personality, in that there are some people he still values afterwards and being more realistically psychotic rather than just straight-up so. It even gets him a little bit of backstory, like this poor luck with girls and lies he tells Liu about them to seem "cool".
 * 3) The story is much longer than the original, taking plenty of time to build up the setting and characters while also avoiding many extraneous details that aren't important to the overall plot, which is quite an improvement.
 * 4) Liu, their parents, and the bullies are also given much more personality and believability, in that Liu is somewhat of a doting little brother who heavily relies on Jeff due to their negligent and dysfunctional parents, while Randy and the bullies are not meant to be sympathetic at all and often lie or rely on other's pity in order to get out of a situation while also having a warped belief of superiority and an inability to accept that it's challenged by Jeff and Liu.
 * 5) Vastly superior dialogue to the original story, with Jeff and Liu cracking occasional jokes to make them feel like real people rather than surrogates for the audience, insults between them and the bullies that feel more real and decently clever, and even their parent's dialogue feeling more real.
 * 6) It fixes a lot of logical problems with the original story and makes it feel much more realistic and interesting as a result.
 * 7) Rather than the police being sent to Jeff's house and Liu framing himself by holding a knife and getting sent to Juvenile Hall, this one has the parents believe that they are a bad influence on each other while also being swayed to avoid legal action by sending Liu away to live with their aunt against his will.
 * 8) As opposed to Jeff's parents being side characters to their suffering, they're actively involved in it through cowardice by pretty much trying to avoid being in trouble with the bullies' parents, one of whom is Jeff's dad's boss. They're not only negligent and have a very fraught marriage, but they also don't trust their own children and actively lie to preserve their own perceived images.
 * 9) Randy and the bullies don't stupidly crash a party and even more stupidly get killed by Jeff there, instead, they lure Jeff over with the promise of making amends and letting Liu come back only to torment him when all the adults are gone.
 * 10) Jeff's descent into madness isn't brought on by a single incident or a desire to always see himself smiling forever. Instead, it's caused by abuse from his peers and psychological torment from his parents that slowly turns him into a killer, which is very interesting. It also gives the reader more emotional agency to Jeff and Liu, making the story legitimately disturbing, but also emotionally affecting rather than just grotesque and vile.
 * 11) The story of how Jeff was disfigured is also, for the most part, much better. Jeff doesn't burn off his eyelids (which is impractical and unscientific at best), and instead is injured severely in an accident with a flare gun, burning a large portion of his face and blinding him in one eye.
 * 12) It feels like the author was actually trying to make a genuine story with real imagination, unlike many other creepypasta writers who blatantly rip stuff off for views and are extremely arrogant trolls trying to ruin your childhood.
 * 13) The encounter between Jeff and his parents is legitimately intense, prolonged, and actually pretty scary, as opposed to the original just having them go after a gun (instead of, I don't know, a phone to call the hospital for their mentally ill son?) and then getting unceremoniously gutted, this one builds up the tension with the realization that Jeff's parents sealed their own doom with their neglect and indifference to his plight and how he seems rather sarcastic at first, saying he's scaring them before killing them both in a not-so-quick-or-clean manner.
 * 14) Very little gore at all in the story, which is a big step up from plenty of creepypastas that rely on overly excessive gore and gruesome content for views. Instead, the violence is more realistic and genuinely disturbing as a result. It also doesn't rely on grossly disturbing subjects to seem "scary".
 * 15) The ending is also vastly improved from the original. Rather than kill Liu, the one person who loved and supported him out of random psychosis, Jeff spares him, telling him to "go to sleep" but meaning it literally, giving a rather saddening goodbye before leaving as the monster he's become while trying to spare Liu of that life, knowing Liu will wake up tomorrow none-the-wiser until he finds their parent's bodies.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Despite the aforementioned improvements, some parts don't always hold up to scrutiny or suffer from cliches.
 * 2) The bully's dad having a position of power over the victims is an overdone stereotype, especially when he's not even a character in the story and how it's kind of a blatant plot device.
 * 3) The flare gun disfiguring Jeff, while pretty practical and unexpected, also feels a little too serendipitous, and it's also a little unbelievable that Randy could explain that away so well even with their respective parents who are apparently world-class frauds.
 * 4) Jeff and Liu's parents go from pretty realistically negligent and cruel to just plain awful towards the end, where they don't even try to make the situation of their disfigured son any better by going out to dinner with them or even acknowledging his presence. What's worse is how the mom is literally only concerned with his appearance rather than his health, which feels pretty unrealistic even by their standards.
 * 5) Although more realistic, Randy and the bullies don't get any real punishment for their actions and their outright crimes like in the original (even if Jeff had no consequences for literally killing them), which is a little unbelievable.
 * 6) Despite the many overall improvements in the dialogue, some lines are still pretty cliche and overdone in horror stories, including and especially creepypastas.