INK (2009)

As the light fades and the city goes to sleep, two forces emerge. They are invisible except for the power they exert over us in our sleep, battling for our souls through dreams. One force delivers hope and strength; the other infuses the subconscious with desperation through nightmares.

I stumbled across this movie by picking a theater that was playing five movies that I had never heard of. I watched trailers for all the films and decided to go to the one with the coolest trailer. Ink's caught my eye. You can view it here.

Ink is a story about the fight for a little girl and her fathers soul, both in the real and subconscious world.  In the subconscious world there is a battle between good and evil every night to control our dreams. We have or guardians who bring us good dreams and protect us. The Incubus are the faces of evil that bring nightmares.

Ink is a character who has not yet become a Incubus, and he has been given a task to bring a young girls soul back to the council.

It is written, directed, edited, composed and produced by Jamin Winans who shows that he is truly talented on multiple levels. After watching it the first time in theaters I remember coming out and being blown away by the visual effects and shots that are in this low budget, independent movie. But I was disappointed in the acting and script.

I re-watched the movie and came away with a different opinion on the acting. The little girl, played by Quinn Hunchar, I thought was very good. This was her first major film and I believed really stood out. Christopher Soren Kelly and Jessica Duffy play two of the other leads and they also have good performances.

The visual effects are very good for this type of movie, many of the films you see with much higher budgets looks much worse than this. It is very risky to make an independent movie that is so effect heavy, because it can turn a viewer off very quickly if they look bad.

Jamin Winans has a great vision throughout the film, he creates interesting characters who really bring us inside the subconscious world.  He reminds me a lot of Guillermo del Toro with his creativity and versatility as a director. I would really love to see what he could do on a studio film.

I do believe that the script still lacks what this movie needs to take it to the next level as a film. Some of it seems like it is trying to hard to force things into movie, like comedy. One of the coolest characters in the movie, the pathfinder, is ruined for me due to the over the top antics, that originally came off as just bad acting. Some of the scenes also seem very amateur in dialogue, especially the scenes where one of the characters is trying to make a billion dollar business corporation deal.

The movie is over stylized with color which hurts it as well, some of it looks perfect and you feel like that this is what the subconscious world would feel like. Some of time though it just makes it look very low budget, especially when the visual effects look so good and the color looks so bad.

I liked the movie both times I saw it, by no means is it a great movie that everyone will like, but for what the movie is I think it was very well done. It had a reported budget of around $250,000, so watch it knowing that you are seeing a low budget indie and I think it will impress.


When to Watch Rating: Indie Film Mood

Available on Netflix Instant View, Hulu and IMDB