Last night I finished a rewatch of The Cabin in the Woods. I should really say this morning, because I finished around 1:30.
I did watch it again from the start, but it was the continuation of an attempted rewatch from a couple months ago. When I got in no more than 25 minutes on that attempt, instead of finishing it the next day, I abandoned the viewing. That's how I'll usually handle an interrupted rewatch, though first-time viewings always get completed the next day.
I thought it might have been my first rewatch, but no. My records tell me I watched it for the second time back in 2014. That makes sense. It's a movie I really liked and continue to really like.
But something bothers me about it just a little bit, and it has nothing to do with the movie itself, which I already discussed in detail in this post if you've read into this post for that sort of analysis of the film.
When you look up The Cabin in the Woods on either IMDB or Letterboxd, it is listed as a 2011 film. Which we all know is wrong. It's easy for me to remember that the film belongs with 2012. I saw it in the theater in April of 2012, just after its release, and one of the reasons I easily remember it's from that year is because of this post, which is still the only post on this blog ever written by a guest writer, in which he talked about the feat of watching and ranking 212 movies in the year 2012. (Which is a laughable thing to be impressed at nowadays, since the same guy has subsequent watched nearly 500 films during the same period.) Anyway, as you can see, The Cabin in the Woods is responsible for the art for this post.
So why, then, the 2011 year?
Well of course it is the usual suspect in cases like this: a film festival from the year prior to its release. The moment a film debuts in any public venue, it gets slapped with that release year on places like IMDB and Letterboxd, never to relinquish it. And though that annoys us, we can accept the reasoning and we just move on with our lives.
So where did The Cabin in the Woods play in 2011, you ask? Was it TIFF maybe? That's a September festival, and might have given in the necessary thrust for an early 2012 release. The Cabin in the Woods is not the sort of film you necessarily debut during Oscar season. Which isn't to say it's not good -- of course it's quite good -- it's just that you'd correctly assume it could help prop up the otherwise weak start of a release year. October would also be a good time to debut it, for Halloween, but that would be too soon after TIFF to build any sort of marketing campaign.
So I looked it up on IMDB, and there was exactly one festival in which it appeared, in December of 2011. On December 11 of 2011, in fact. It was:
The Butt-Numb-a-Thon Film Festival.
I will allow a moment's pause for you to finish laughing like Beavis and/or Butthead.
Oh my.
What exactly is this festival, you ask?
It's cooler than it sounds, it turns out. It was a secret 24-hour film marathon held at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin from 1999 to 2016. It was the brainchild of Ain't It Cool News founder Harry Knowles. That's a name I haven't heard in a while. In fact, when I just looked him up, I discovered the festival appears to have ended as a result of his expulsion from the Austin Film Critics Association in September of 2017 following credible accusations of sexual assault. So that's why I haven't heard about him lately.
Ever helpful despite its impending takeover of the world -- not inappropriate for a discussion of this movie -- AI tells me that the festival was in celebration of Knowles' birthday (December 11th) and that it contained "a lineup of films kept completely secret from the audience ahead of time. It featured a mix of rare vintage prints, cult classics, and surprise high-profile studio premieres."
So that last is where The Cabin in the Woods comes in.
But is the fact that an estimated 200 people (according to AI) saw it with three weeks remaining in 2011 enough to associate it in all public documents with the year 2011?
I say it is not. And so when I list the movie in places like my Most Recently Seen area on the right, I will continue to write 2012 as the release year. Because that was the real release year for this movie.
But what happens when I'm old and no longer remember that The Cabin in the Woods came out in 2012 and that a friend of mine wrote a blog post about the 212 films he ranked in 2012? What will I do then?
I guess I will just pop in my dentures and my bionic eyes and enjoy the viewing. And if I've forgotten some of the film's twists and turns, all the better.
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