DVD Review - INK

Ink begins with a daughter imagining some fearsome monsters as her father looks on. As she cries for help, he resists the game, wrapped up in the seriousness of his job, before finally relenting and joining the fantasy to save her. It seems like a simple moment, pitting the world weary John (Kelly) against the fierce imagination of his daughter Emma (Hunchar) but it’s actually a subtle microcosm of the entire story.

Ink is a microbudget independent feature assembled by husband and wife team Jamin and Kiowa Winans over a period of years and previously drip fed to arthouse cinemas around the US before appearing on home video there. It deals with a multi-dimensional story of the beings who create our dreams and nightmares and one little girl who becomes the focus of both sides when she is stolen from our world by a mysterious, misshapen creature called Ink.

The budget may be small but the ideas and the implementation are hugely impressive – with the Winans working on everything from special effects, costumes, editing and sound design themselves to create a world that is simply stunning. It’s the variety that will grab your attention first – the slow introduction exploding into a cacophony of well produced fight sequences and subtle special effects while the crises of the central human characters are contrasted with Ink’s journey and the dangers Emma faces in multiple worlds.

Notions of fate and choice are explored as the characters move inexorably towards confrontation – culminating in a blistering finale that cross cuts three separate realities as evil Incubi vie with the Storytellers for control of one man’s destiny. It’s mesmerizingly edited, wonderfully choreographed and the equal of any mind bending action film you’ll see this year.

The cast is mostly exceptional, led by a fabulously layered performance from Kelly and the adorable Hunchar. Some peripheral characters are a little broad and can feel extraneous to the plot and there’s no denying that the dubbed dialogue can sometimes be a little distracting but, for the most part, the best thing you can say about Ink is that you rarely feel like it was constrained by its budget. With some nice moments of quirky humour, surprisingly hard-hitting action and one of the more memorable final scenes we’ve seen in years, Ink is well worth checking out when it finally hits home video in Ireland this April.

Extras: Jamin and Kiowa Winans sit for a candid and engaging commentary which details the incredible work which went into crafting Ink. There’s also a too short 10 minute making of, a charming chat with leads Chris Kelly and Quinn Hunchar (over coffee) a deleted scene and the film’s nicely crafted trailers.


Ahead of the home video release, we got in touch with the filmmakers for a few words on the incredible journey Ink has made over the last few years.

"Taking the film out theatrically in the US without any marketing budget or any help was an enormous task, but we managed to generate a good amount of buzz and fans through those screenings. We fought to get the DVD out as soon as possible, and within the first week of its US release, we were shocked when INK not only surfaced on torrent sites but got illegally downloaded over a million times. An indie filmmakers first battle is against obscurity, so instead of speaking negatively about the downloads we embraced it as quite possibly the best ad campaign a $250,000 film could have. Now, almost two years later, we are thrilled to see INK get promoted and released in the UK and Ireland. Our hats are off to 4 Digital Media for getting excited about not just the film, but the story of its release and its potential to reach new fans internationally."

Kiowa Winans


Check it out - Click got a quote in the trailer!