The film is a fantasy story that revolves around a daughter, Quinn Hunchar, and her father, Chris Kelly. During the night, two opposing forces work to influence the dreams of the sleeping world, unbeknowest to them. The storytellers comprise the good force and influence happy dreams while the incubi are on the evil side and bring on the nightmares. A lost soul, Ink, captures the young girl during the night in order to bring her to the incubi as a requirement for his transformation to become one of them thus leaving her physical body in a coma. The storytellers are then set on a quest to bring the girl back to her physical body and must help the father overcome his own issues along the way.
The plot is obviously very heavily involved in the fantasy world created by Winans. The plot was easy enough to follow and when you got down to it, basically it was good versus evil trying to save the innocent child from the evil captor. The movie walked right on the edge of being demented and scary but didn’t cross over. Instead, it was a dark fantasy that was created somewhere inbetween The Labrinyth and Donnie Darko. I liked how the story wasn’t about creating a new fantasy world (i.e. Lord of the Rings) but was rather about the story of fate vs. free will and the fantasy elements were used as tools. The characters were mostly one dimensional but this was to be expected. The reasoning behind a lot of the elements were unclear but again I felt the film was more about the story at hand rather than the world that was created.
Okay, it’s extremely important to note that this was a low budget film. That being said, there were some really nice elements in the movie and some things that should have been left out. The cinematography would not have been acceptable for a larger budget film, but given what they had to work with it is understandable. First, the villains or incubi, were done really well. They were extremely memorable and creepy without being psychotic and demented. The visual effects were done nicely with these characters as well. The fight sequences were also done nicely and used motion effects and a great score to mask the fact that the sequences were really cheap. Without the motion effects or music, the fight sequences would have been laughable. The way the storytellers popped on scene from light flashes was decent although could have been left out in my opinion. The makeup on Ink did not need to be seen close up like it was. I understand that his appearance was a direct result from his pride, shame, and guilt, but they could’ve left his face under the cloak and only hinted at his appearance. There was some really great editing in this movie and there was some really bad editing. Most of the action sequences were done really well and had some great jump cuts, especially when the pathfinder is chanting and the cuts go with the beat of the scene. However, when there were straight dialogue scenes, the editing was bad and distracting. It was as if they were just cutting back and forth every two seconds and not editing with the scene. It came across to me as if they were trying to hard at some parts with the editing. Jamin Winans also composed the score to the movie and at some parts, the score was really amazing and worked well with the movie. Overall, it was artistic and apparent what was trying to be done. Some areas could have been re-focused but given the low budget, it was nicely done.
The girl and father were the only good actors in this movie. Both were very likeable and there was something about the father’s voice which just came across so smoothly on camera that I was drawn to him. The rest of the actors in this movie belonged in a Xena Warrior Princess tv show. They seemed to believe their roles, but they came across as bad tv actors. I think they could’ve decided to cut back on the number of characters in the movie and invest in some additional quality actors.
Overall, this was an enjoyable film. It was almost like the student version of a Donnie Darko type movie. It really did seem to fit in the gap between Darko and The Labrinyth as I mentioned before. The film was not smooth because some areas were done nicely and others were sub-par. The premis and dedication in the movie is to be respected and I think this could be made into a really great feature film if given a bigger budget and with certain areas re-directed. I would probably recommend this to people who enjoy cult fantasy movies or low budget indies. “I choose to see you as the person you were intended to be instead of the person you have become” – Ink.
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