2009’s Ink is a low-budget and little-seen fantasy film that delivers a wild ride and unique visual interpretation that should appeal to those looking for something a little different from the genre.
What Is It?
In this movie, we are introduced to a group of warriors called the Storytellers who live on a different plane of reality and provide humans with good dreams. These people also protect humanity against the nefarious Incubi, vain spirits who deliver nightmares and who wear screens over their faces that display a perpetual facade of happiness. A deformed being named Ink, neither Storyteller nor Incubi, kidnaps a young girl’s mind from the real world, despite strong resistance from the Storytellers, and plans to take her to the Incubi as an offering so that he can join their ranks. However, his drum, which can open the portals, is broken, so he must take a longer, less-direct route. A Storyteller named Allel—who had tried to protect the girl from Ink—summons up a blind pathfinder named Jacob to track the creature down and free the girl. In the real world, the girl is in a comatose state, and her grandfather asks her father—a high-powered workaholic businessman—to come and see her, hoping this will help draw her out of her coma.
Cast: Christopher Soren Kelly, Quinn Hunchar, Jessica Duffy, Jennifer Batter, Jeremy Make, Marty Lindsey
Crew: Jamin Winans (Writer/Director/Executive Producer/Composer), Kiowa K. Winans (Executive Producer)
Original Release: 2009
Legacy:
This low-budget urban fantasy had only a brief run in theaters, but it offered a creative and trippy tale that drew some positive buzz and has since developed a small cult following.
A Closer Look:
This odd little indie film is a bit hard to pin down, but here’s a shot at describing it: imagine what would happen if Terry Gilliam did a Disney film while taking large quantities of hallucinogenic drugs. If that sounds pretty trippy and something that might interest you, I recommend searching it out because it is worth your time.
Ink comes from indie writer/producer/director Jamin Winans, and despite its left-field description, it actually delivers at its core a fairly standard story that Disney and other kid-friendly studios have covered many times before. We have the child with a workaholic parent who spends very little time with his daughter and cannot fully connect with her. Then, she falls into trouble and ultimately the parent does the right thing and comes to her aid just in time to deliver a happy, feel-good ending.
But Winans manages to take this very familiar premise and rework it well enough that he succeeds in providing a fresh spin on an old tale, and what he delivers in the end is also anything but a kids’ story (in fact, younger viewers might find it quite disturbing at times). Reworking a familiar tale is not in itself a bad thing; heck, most of Shakespeare’s works were inspired by stories that came from previous scribes. The trick is to take the familiar and make something new with it, and Ink does just that.
The film gives us a pure fantasy story, despite its Terry Gilliam-like sci-fi trappings, and introduces a bizarre dreamworld that seems ludicrous yet believable at the same time. Winans had very little money to work with (only $250k, according to Wikipedia), but he gets the most from his limited budget and excels in creating a surreal, stylized world that comes to life without CGI-overload. If I could complain about only one thing production-wise, it would be the character Ink’s very fake, rubbery-looking snout, but try to look past that minor detail to the film’s better qualities. And it has many, including the excellent performances and the nearly seamless blending of the surreal dreamworld with our own reality. And even though the story treads familiar ground, Winans’ vision and imagination make it feel like a wild ride and a completely new experience. Unlike the many mega-dollar bloated fests that dominate the theaters and rely heavily on their in-your-face CGI visuals to compensate for their tired, copy-and-paste plots, Ink takes what has come before and breathes new life into it.
Just a note, though, that this movie may not be everybody’s cup of tea because of its bizarre, trippy juxtaposition of the fantasy dreamworld with reality. In fact, I found it somewhat inaccessible early on, but I stuck with it and was glad I did. It delivers a unique and, at times, dark world, but one that is certainly worth visiting.
Why Was There No Sequel?
Ink was independently made by Jamin and Kiowa Winans, and it was never picked up for distribution by a big studio. It did get pirated pretty heavily early on, which actually helped the film by building up a reputation, and that led to strong sales on DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD. The Winans continued with independent production of films, but instead of a sequel to Ink they produced The Frame, which was released in 2014. That created a similar sort of fantasy world with some sci-fi trappings (and watch for a future post on it), but it was not linked to the universe of Ink.
Should It Be Rebooted?
No. This film might have had a low budget (and certainly could have used a better nose for Ink), but it counts as a rare piece of cinematic artwork, and there is nothing that a reboot could do to improve on the property. More stories in the same universe would certainly be appreciated, but we don’t need a big-budget reworking of the film.
Interesting Fact:
Winans claimed in the director’s commentary that he distinguished the different worlds in the film with several subtle factors. The dream world has blurry edges and also has images or people randomly mixed in. The Incubus world is green-tinted, while the Storytellers’ world is gold-tinted. And the real world is presented as clear.
Where Can You Watch It?
The film has been released on Blu-ray and DVD and it is also available to purchase VOD. It is available for streaming on Amazon’s Prime Video, and you can watch it for free (with ads) on services like Tubi TV and The Roku Channel.
Stream or Purchase VOD
