‘Drained’ VOD Review
Stars: Ruaridh Aldington, Angela Dixon, Craig Conway, Madalina Bellarui Ion, Andrew Lyle-Pinnock, Natasha Patel, Andrew Lee Potts | Written by Peter Stylianou | Directed by Peter Stylianou, Sean Cronin
It feels like vampires and vampirism are often used as metaphors as they are as supernatural threats these days. Be it obsession, addiction or undying love, there’s a flock of fanged films that uses them to explore it. Drained, a new film from writer Peter Stylianou (The Lost, Who Needs Enemies) who co-directed it with Sean Cronin (Bogieville, Give Them Wings) combines some of these into a story that looks at codependency and toxic relationships.
Thomas (Ruaridh Aldington; Andes Plane Crash, Dirty Boy) is an artist, he may not be a starving artist, but he is an unemployed one who still lives at home with his mother (Angela Dixon; Never Let Go, A Dark Reflection). He’s focused on creating a killer portfolio, but at the expense of getting any actually assignments in the here and now. It doesn’t help that his mother is also having more luck in the dating pool than he is, even if it is with John (Craig Conway; Dog Soldiers, South of Hope Street), the local exterminator.
While out one night visiting a friend who bartends at a local club, he sees Rhea (Madalina Bellarui Ion; Take Cover, Eridiati: A Different Type of Vampire) and is instantly obsessed with her. She’s attracted to him as well, but she only wants one thing from him, his blood. Apart from the physical pleasure he gets from her drinking his blood, he also gets the emotional pleasure of being wanted and desired, which keeps him coming back for more, or to give more, even as he’s being left weak and hospitalized with malnutrition.
It would be easy to see Drained in a more superficial light, as an allegory for a gold digger, manipulating a man physically and emotionally while draining his bank account. But there are deeper themes and ideas at play here, there is something about his blood that drew her to him, and keeps her there. It’s a mutual addiction that is dangerous to them both, but like many addictions not something that they can easily shake despite the realization of the toll it’s taking on them. And the consequences that trying to do so can bring.
The script does start to falter in the last act, and the final minutes unfortunately come closer to provoking laughter than the sense of tragedy the filmmakers were striving for. But for most of its running time, it’s a well crafted a and acted film. Aldington and Ion have a good chemistry, and are believable as the troubled and dysfunctional leads. They both manage to make the viewer care about characters that not initially likeable and never become fully relatable.
Aldington has the bigger challenge, as Thomas is especially hard to warm up to. When we first meet him, he’s busy having a wank, and it’s not long before he’s busy being a jerk to his mother and whining to his friend Dano (Andrew Lyle-Pinnock; Loki’s Game, The Little Mermaid) about her seeing John. Combined with his lack of ambition, he starts the film as a rather pathetic figure
In support roles, Dixon and Conway are solid, while Natasha Patel (Luther: The Fallen Sun, Tinsel Town) and Andrew Lee Potts (Lore, 400 Bullets) do what they can as detectives with their own secrets who, along with those final few minutes, seem to have come from a totally different film.
Despite it’s stumbles, Drained does deliver a lot of entertainment with along with insights about toxic relationships, addiction and loneliness. Perhaps more impressive is the way it manages to find a new way to use some of the genre’s old tropes and metaphors.
*** 3/5
Level 33 has released Drained to VOD and digital platforms.
______
