Under The Sea
Leviathan (1989): 6 out of 10: dives deep both literally and figuratively into the murky waters of undersea horror, surfacing somewhere between Alien and The Thing with more than a little The Abyss and of all things Sphere in its DNA.
It seems on brand that the monster is a genetic mess made up of various creatures. The movie is a cinematic mess mixed up with various films.
Set in the crushing depths of the Atlantic Ocean, the film plants us inside a mining operation’s claustrophobic habitat. The crew is wrapping up a 90-day tour of duty extracting precious minerals from the ocean floor, and they’d really like to head home without incident. Naturally, that’s not in the cards.
At the center of our submerged soap opera is geologist Steven Beck, played by Peter Weller in full steely-eyed, reluctant-hero, might have dropped a quaalude mode, leading a motley crew of blue-collar archetypes through the final stretch of their mission.
There’s the sexist creep, the gruff technician, the prison doctor; you get the idea. This crew discovers a derelict Soviet vessel ominously named Leviathan, and, in a move that has bad idea written in fluorescent letters, they bring some of its mysterious contents back to their base. Because nothing says “what could possibly go wrong?” like salvaging items from a sunken Russian ship during the Cold War.
As you might expect, those contents contain more than just outdated vodka and family photos. Soon enough, strange symptoms start spreading among the crew, tension ratchets up faster than cabin pressure in a hull breach.
The bulk of the film becomes a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse in the confines of their underwater tin can, with paranoia, body horror, and a healthy mistrust of corporate overlords all taking center stage.
Leviathan swims in familiar cinematic waters but does so with a certain B-movie charm. It may not reinvent the genre, but it leans into its influences and isn’t afraid to get gooey when the situation demands it.
There’s something oddly comforting about its mix of practical effects, underwater dread, and corporate callousness. The parts are all here for a good B-movie. Alas…. well, you can read below.
The Good
The Good: I like some of the actors, with Ernie Hudson and Richard Crenna being real standouts. The creature may be a little to derivative of the one from The Thing, but it works here. Stan Winston and his team at Stan Winston Studio really hit it out of the park. I just wish it was in a better movie.
The screenwriters obviously heard the union shop talk about percentages around the dinner table in Alien and thought, hey lets turn that up to eleven. It is a pleasant idea, and it is done with just enough cheese and bathos to be fun. I particularly liked the late eighties female boss, Meg Foster, who rudely hangs up with her TV remote on every single call.
There is a charm to the sets and special effects. They are almost all practical and they give me the warm and fuzzies. I am not sure exactly why an undersea mining operation would have two flamethrowers, but I am here for it.
The Bad
The Bad: There were plenty of opportunities to kill off Peter Weller. The movie should have taken at least one of them. Not that Peter Weller is bad in this. He is okay. It is just the plot shoots itself in the foot keeping him alive.
Amanda Pays showers with her bra and panties on. No one in real life does this. I am not marking Leviathan down for this, mind you. But let’s just say it left some money on the table. Especially considering it is a B-movie horror knock off made in Italy.
Lisa Eilbacher is the other cutie and, honestly, Leviathan does not seem to know what to do with her either. Let’s be blunt. A good sci-fi horror film does not need gratuitous nudity. Leviathan needed all the help it could get.
Amanda Pays and Peter Weller have a water cooler romance that has less of a pulse than most of the early victims of the monster. It is a blink or you miss it kind of thing until the ending… And speaking of the ending.
The Ugly
The Ugly: Man Leviathian was cruising to an okay genre film with big stars seven out of ten and then it had to go and fumble the ending. And I mean fumble hard. There are stock footage sharks that show up out of nowhere to no effect and well, it is the ending, so I will not give away too much, but it felt like boxes had to be rapidly ticked rather than a story coming to its natural conclusion.
In Conclusion
In Conclusion: This movie could have been great. Or at the very least, really fun. Ghost Ship takes a similar premise and makes gold with it. And Ghost Ship is hardly a movie without faults. I keep changing my score on this (It has been everywhere from 5 to 7). It has fun bits and I like the cast. But it is so paint by numbers in so many ways and honestly it really does not take advantage of being a bad B movie either.
But Leviathan is not boring and while I would not rush out to watch it again like I would with Ghost Ship or The Thing, it holds it together till the denouement. That said, I am on team Ernie Hudson lives and Peter Weller dies… just saying.
