Originally released in 1999, it's understandable how this film passed as terrifying. The handleheld shaky camera movement, and the film's premise playing on the fears of being lost in the woods was severely nauseating. When I was 13 years old and watched The Blair Witch Project, I was absolutely terrified. Watching Heather's crew hurl insults at each other as one of them admits to kicking away their essential map ranked on some of my all-time scariest scenes.
Revisiting the film almost ten years later, I was a bit surprised by how weak it truly is. The actual myth of the Blair Witch doesn't go any deeper than several brief interviews with townspeople. (Granted that one of them leads to define the ending.)
Most of the film focuses on the teenagers out in the forest gratuitously and repetitively shrilling f-bombs around about how lost they are. There is no variety of events that breaks up the isolation and the threat of unknown entities following them around. They wander around for a while playing off their struggles with jokes before getting in each others' faces again and again. It is not very scary stuff.
For so long, Heather and her friends avoid some very common sense decisions to reach civilization, I was inspired to create a list for fellow myth chasers on how not to stay lost.
4. Read your survival guides.
At the beginning of the film Heather shows us several survival guides for the purpose that if they get lost, one of them will do some kind of good. This scene takes place before her and her friends begin their big adventure. In the few days and nights of walking, hiking, crying, and yelling at each other Heather never once reads one of those guides. I'm pretty sure there was a page in there somehow about how to survive.
3. Genuinely follow a trail
As the golden trio of filmmaking begin their trek, you'd think there was some sort of trail for them to follow. You expect them to walk at least one pathway cleared of sticks and debri that might show any signs of its officiality as a trail. The crew just parks their car, pick out a spot and says "We walk this way." Then once they are in the woods, "Oh, let's go this way. We're not lost!" Remain on the trail.
2. Leave markers behind
Heather remarks about their busy schedule when in reality they only had two locations to find deep into the forest. If you're going to wander off any semblence of a trail, leave markers behind; tie clothing to a tree, checkered road flags, sticks (preferably not shaped like voodoo dolls), rocks. Keep something behind that'll remind you whether you've crossed over that same damn creek thirty times.
1. Make extra copies of the map.
In this advanced world of technology, a warning might not have to be issued here...but in the case that you are camping on a sophisticated mountaintop and get lost, and your cellphone / Ipad has very little power. Make copies of a map. Don't give copies of the map to the guy who can't handle the idea of even being on this lousy trip in the first place. Make extras, keep them with you, guard them with your life. (And learn to read them properly before using them too.)