The choice to make him able to run, more generally aggressive and smarter with the tunnels and alerts made total sense to me.

He's a killer that's both lived in the woods for decades and also is still a child at heart. They blended both together surprisingly well. He's adapted to his environment, used it and learned many skills. Yet he's also just an angry little boy which comes out in how viscous the deaths were and how much more agile he is.

Jason Voorhees as a lumbering slow silent killer made sense for those films but I think they found a take that's a bit more tangible and distinctively it's own thing compared to other slasher villains. This Jason isn't like Michael Myers in the slightest. He might not talk, but he's not a cold emotionless stalker.

As for him taking Whitney as a hostage, that's kinda questionable as an addition and seems unwarranted/like a pure plot contrivance, but since why he does it isn't directly explained you could speculate on why, unless I missed the direct explanation. Aside from that, I loved this version of Jason. Kane Hodder was more of an intimidating beast but Derek Mears did his own strong take on the character and his writing was for the most part a good new version of the character.

Edit: Okay, it's a popular consensus, not even a slightly unpopular one. People love Derek Mears's Jason.