Skip to content
Answering Your Questions About Reactor: Right here.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Everything in one handy email.
When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

Reactor

Twenty-four hours ago, I didn’t know one thing about Jamin Winans. Then I caught a trailer for Ink, a self-penned and self-directed movie about two supernatural factions that war for control of people’s dreams, and for one young girl whose life is at stake.

After Winans received festival acclaim for his 2005 short film Spin, he wrote and directed 11:59, a full-length film about a young photojournalist who wakes up with a 24-hour hole in his past. It also showed at several festivals, winning awards at two. With such a film-festival pedigree and a savvy online presence, Winans is poised for the pickup from Big Hollywood, which is on the prowl for inexpensive cult movies with a shot at the big time. (See also: Saw.)

Ink is wrapped, and according to the website it’s “Coming in 2009.” But with no firm release date or outside studio affiliation, the film has a nebulous future, and the question is: why hasn’t Hollywood given him The Call?

There are many things at work in his favor. He’s demonstrated he can stick to a rock-bottom budget. He’s written his films himself, which shows imagination (and saves money on scriptwriters—for good or ill). There is a high level of workmanship in the film itself; he knows how to dress a set and how to light and frame a shot, and the trailer shows one or two moments of genuine and imaginative creepiness.

The trailer feels familiar—too familiar, at times. Though wouldn’t Hollywood jump on the familiar elements of a science-fiction movie? They still let M. Night Shyamalan handle a camera, and this trailer is more mysterious than his last two movies. Has Hollywood just had enough of high-concept spec unless gore is involved (not that it ever stopped Saw)? Would studios rather not deal with sub-standard acting? If so, will they promise never to cast Jessica Alba again? (Please?)

Is Hollywood skittish about a director who’s so set in his ways that he’d rather make his own movies than compromise with studios? Or is it just that his work doesn’t make the cut?

Check out the trailer below, and tell me: why hasn’t Hollywood made the call?

About the Author

About Author Mobile

Genevieve Valentine

Author

Genevieve Valentine’s first novel, Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, won the 2012 Crawford Award and was nominated for the Nebula. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Journal of Mythic Arts, Lightspeed, Apex, and others, and the anthologies Federations, The Living Dead 2, Running with the Pack, After, and more.

Her nonfiction has appeared at NPR.org, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Weird Tales, Tor.com, and she is a co-author of Geek Wisdom (out from Quirk Books). She is an occasional columnist at Fantasy magazine, and sporadically updates her Twitter. Her appetite for bad movies is insatiable, a tragedy she tracks on her blog. More information can be found at www.genevievevalentine.com.

Learn More About Genevieve
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
8 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments