Educational Media Reviews Online

Presented as an intelligent and extraordinary film, Lost transcends the scary aspects of the box office hit, Blair Witch Project, by integrating search and rescue techniques with scientific studies.

To know where you are, to know where you have been, and to know where you are going are critical issues in spatial orientation. Maintaining orientation is essential to survive in everyday life. Although modern civilization has made the need to 'read' the landscape to orient oneself on the earth at most times unnecessary, several cultures still depend on nature for their spatial orientation. The Inuit, for example, can find their way (home) in "whiteout" conditions. They use their well-differentiated abilities to pick up cues in the environment to sense their way.

In literature, art, legends, myths, and even, architecture, getting lost or being lost and then finding one's way is an archetypal experience. The film cuts from a Search and Rescue Conference where Dr. Daniel R. Montello (University of Santa Barbara, Calif.) speaks to the psychology of being lost. And Dr. Kenneth A. Hill (Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada and member of the Search and Rescue Society of British Columbia) discusses how he got involved in the study of finding lost persons. These rescuers search for hunters and hikers, young and old alike - anyone reported lost in the Canadian woods.

When you are lost, you are disoriented. You are turned around and your perception changes. You start to panic, and then your imagination and memory are tricked, and you are scared because you are lost. What was once familiar is now unfamiliar, and your behavior is unpredictable.

The topic is intriguing because you can't really study being lost. You can not observe a lost person. You can only ask questions of the person if and when they are found. When young children are lost and then found it is impossible to get answers to questions about what the child did, how he felt, and what was experienced before the rescue. In contrast to a lost child, many adults (both male and female) are shown during their search and rescue operations, and interviewed afterwards.

Intended for an audience of high school and up, this fascinating subject, the psychology and physical orientation of being lost, engages the viewer. The mix of academic and scientific action counterbalances the real time search and rescue. This film will hold your attention, and leave you wanting to know more. Highly recommended.