just done a marathon session incl the 1979 version and this one
being a not-horror genre person, I preferred the 2005 one
it was interesting because you can actually compare 'horror techniques' from 1979 and 2005. the 2005 one moved faster. the 1979 spent a lot of time....not really doing much (in the same way as the first Alien film spent a lot of time not doing very much). psychological build up and stuff.
for me the two freakiest parts of the 1979 were the weird blue animal heads in the window, and when Margot Kidder had age wrinkles for 1 second
the 2005 one was just...well....more interesting. more varied. Ryan Reynolds did a good job trying to have the same hair and beard style as the guy in the 1979 one, and obviously his character went along the same "goes bad" lines
the lightning sound effects in the first on were slightly ridiculous. one of my peeves is that in r/l, the thunder sound never happens at the same time as the lightning. in 'ollywood, the sound and the light effects happens simultaneously. which it doesn't, ever
in 1979 a lot of the horror scenes seem to be the persons face, and you don't see what they are looking at until 5 seconds later, and then they aren't really looking at anything. drop some cgi effects in in 2005 and you see the subject more often