I am coming around to seeing this new version of "Nightmare Alley." I usually have qualms about remakes, but on rare occasions the new productions score a bullseye.
I was quite pleased with "True Grit" with Jeff Bridges outdoing the Academy Award winning performance of John Wayne. The Coen Brothers delivered a rough edged and unvarnished picture while the original seems to be bathed in sentimentality.

I have not read the novel and wondered if the setting of "Nightmare Alley" was changed? A significant number of scenes in the original are set in Chicago whereas the remake is in Buffalo.