Once in a while, when the moon strikes blue, there’ll be a movie that’ll weave a unique world of dark fantasy for audiences to visit. In Ink, that realm is one of daydreams and nightmares. It’s a style that both Neil Gaiman (writer of The Sandman comics) and Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy) can appreciate.
With denizens from the underworld looking like trendy ghosts donning white sunglasses, they come through as genuinely creepy. These dark lords of the Dreamtime are Incubi (with no relation to the creatures in folklore) and they are a stark contrast to the guardians of hope, better known as the Storytellers. That is, they represent the good stuff people like to dream of but can ever remember when they wake up.
True to how real dreams work, this film cuts back and forth from the imagined to the waking as fast as a switch-blade. In true Tarintino style, events flash back and forth. It goes back to a few days previous where our hero John (Chris Kelly) is introduced. Before audiences could realize it, he’s injured and we enter his dreams. This approach may seem jarring at first, but there is a reason to it. The disjointedness shows how John’s world is divided. At work, he’s a cruel calculating businessman. At home, his life is non-existent. After his wife died, he fell into despair; as a result, his daughter goes to live with his in-laws.
And what director Jamin Winans developed is a Greek tragedy with Orphic undertones. When John’s daughter, Emma (Quinn Hunchar) is kidnapped, thus begins the descent to the Underworld not only to save one’s soul, but also another’s. The only shame is that Hunchar doesn’t get much screen time to show off her acting chops.
While no big studio has picked up this movie to distribute, the film-makers have taken it upon themselves to distribute this movie on their own. This film can be downloaded via bittorrent or bought at doubleedgefilms.com.
