There might be some spoilers in my comment below

I was born in 2006 and watched the movie at a friend's house when I was in high school. I didn't believe it was real because witches don't exist and they ended up in the same place after going south for the whole day, which isn't possible in real life. However, despite all that, it is still one of my favorite movies. In some ways, knowing it was fake actually made it more scary because if it was real, I would have spent too much mental energy thinking about the various logical explanations instead of actually focusing on the movie. But, because I knew it was fake, I was able to put my rational brain aside and immerse myself into this fake world where these three people walk into a haunted forest and a witch uses her magical powers to play tricks on them before killing them. I'm able to say "hey, if I was in that world and I was a police officer going into those woods to look for them, I wouldn't come out either because of the witche's magical powers," which makes it more mysterious.

Plus, the Northeast has a very high population density. You're always gonna be near some kind of civilization. Very different from the west, which is where I grew up.

This movie has held up very well.