I've never seen the original, I'm sorry to say, but I loved this movie. I'm a total zombie freak, and this is the first movie I watched that was what I was looking for. It was serious, it was scary, and it was original (or a remake...but based on a very original story, ok?).
Anyway, I really liked the way that this story happened all of the sudden. Rather than have the characters slowly figure out for themselves what is going on, the entire movie leaves you almost entirely in the dark. It doesn't even try to explain the zombies - it doesn't want to. It doesn't need to. These are people out in the country; they have no idea why a corpse could re-animate. They're just scared and trying to survive.
Also, the zombies were cool...very eerie-looking and zombielike. I mean, I think one of the coolest and most terrifying things about zombies is their relentlessness, and this is typified by the zombie hit by the car whose back is broken, legs draped over his own neck, who it still tries to crawl up to the house while doubled over backwards.
So see this movie. Very good. You can't go wrong with George Romero's dead trilogy. That's about it.