On Drainiac's audio commentary, writer/director Brett Piper explains that the original 2000 DVD release of this film was essentially unfinished. This new version, which arrives on DVD from Shock-o-Rama on June 24, is newly derived from the original negatives (yes, this baby was shot on 16 millimeter film) with sound and special effects enhancement. Since so much effort went into making this nearly unwatchable revised version, I have to suspect that viewing original imperfect release might very well be lethal.
One of the first clues to the disaster that is Drainiac is the box cover. It's a pretty cool illustration of a slimy creature crawling out of a sink drain and reaching for the viewer, though it's obviously not a photo and doesn't represent anything actually seen in the film. Furthermore if you've ever seen any other movie from the Shock-o-Rama catalog (like Piper's other flick Bacterium, which I reviewed here), you know darn well they could never afford to do this kind of creature effectively.
The film opens with two homeless men taking refuge in a seemingly abandoned house only to meet death by liquification at the hands of something that appears to be living in the plumbing. It's pretty obvious that this scene has very little to do with the rest of the film, and Piper confirms on the audio commentary that this part was shot after the fact to pad the running time. As we get into the film proper, young Julie (Georgia Hatzis) has been in rough shape since her mother's suicide. She's stuck living with her Dad -- the reason her mother killed herself -- whose characterization switch is stuck halfway between a-hole and douche bag. The character is infuriatingly without motivation, treating his daughter like garbage for no more discernible reason than the script calling for it.
Julie's Dad has started buying up dilapidated houses in hopes of repairing them and turning a profit. He's just acquired a new fixer upper out on Old Miskatonik Road, and after leaving Julie to clean the place up by herself he's off to down a few beers. Weird things start to happen, like water flowing along the floor as of it has a mind of its own and Julie has visions of tentacles coming out of the drain and pulling her down. A group of her friends drop by to help with the cleaning, but when she can't convince them of what she's been seeing, her sanity comes into question. When the ground swallows Julie's friends' car they start to believe her, but by then it may be too late.
Hatzis is quite effective as Julia, and the fact that she's since made several appearances in episodic television shows that Drainiac may not have spelled the end of her acting career. Alexandra Boylan who plays Julie's friend Lisa is also credible in her role, though the rest of the cast left me unimpressed.
Piper has a bad habit of leaving thoughts uncompleted. Julie finds a picture of a woman in the abandoned house that resembles her mother, but nothing ever comes of this. There is a scene in which Julie can't sleep because of an unintelligible racket from upstairs, but we never find out what it is. Julie's visions are similarly aggravating. They serve to add horror elements and action, but since they aren't real they do little to move the story forward. And frankly I'm not sure what to make of a scene in which Julie's friend Jake is rescued from drowning in a flooded cellar only to find that there isn't a drop of water to be found once they get the basement door open. Worst of all, Drainiac commits the cardinal sin of being boring, using poorly developed characters to fill in the spaces between the alleged scares.
