5.8/10
23%
28%
51%
2.9/5
59%
I wasn’t sure what I was letting myself in for when turning on Leviathan for the first time. After all, the film came out in the 1980s – a decade famed for its cheap knock-offs of Hollywood blockbusters and terrible straight-to-video horror.
Surprisingly, Leviathan is neither of those.
The film came out in the United States on the 17th March 1989 (making it 37 years old at the time of writing!) and was timed to beat the release of James Cameron’s The Abyss.
Leviathan was one of many films aimed at capitalising on interest in underwater science fiction/fantasy movies thanks to the hype and controversies surrounding Cameron’s production.
As well as The Abyss and Leviathan, 1989 also saw the release of Lords of the Deep and Deep Star Six which are films of, shall we say “mixed” quality in order to be polite?
Having watched both Lords of the Deep and Deep Star Six, I was therefore a bit nervous about what Leviathan would bring.
What’s It About?
Leviathan is set at the bottom of an unnamed body of water but due to some references and the fact that there’s an alleged hurricane approaching I think it’s the Caribbean Sea.
The crew of 8 are part of a deep sea mining crew working for a company called “Tri-Oceanic Corp.” — you know it’s an evil company when it’s got “Corp” in the name!
The rag-tag bunch of explorers include:
Geologist Beck (Peter Weller – RoboCop 1987, Naked Lunch 1991) who is in charge of finding minerals and attempting to control the crew.
“Doc” Thompson (Richard Crenna – Rambo: First Blood 1982) who seems compentent enough but has something to hide.
“Willie” Williams (Amanda Pays – Max Headroom 1987-88) who is hoping to be accepted into the astronaut programme when her 3-month mining stint is over.
“Sixpack” Parrish (Daniel Stern – Blue Thunder 1983, Home Alone 1990), a misogynistic pervert who is out for himself and the money he can make.
Justin Jones (Ernie Hudson – Ghostbusters 1984, The Crow 1994), a no-nonsense everyman who is just trying to get through his shift on the sea floor with as little excitement as possible.
Cobb (Hector Alonzo – Pretty Woman 1990, The Princess Diaries 2001), the world-weary engineer who has a few tricks up his sleeve when it comes to patching up the station’s antiquated and failing systems.
“DeJesus” Rodero (Michael Carmine – Batteries Not Included 1987) who is a young and eager member of the team, not yet worn down by the demands of their corporate puppet masters.
Bridget Bowman (Lisa Eilbacher – Beverly Hills Cop* 1984), a character whose sole purpose is seemingly to provide sex appeal and tease Sixpack.
The crew are in the last few days of their deployment and are finalising their haul. Sixpack and Willie go out on a scouting mission and Sixpack disappears from radio contact. Willie goes to find him and discovers that there is a large Russian vessel at the bottom of a trench that Sixpack fell in because he wasn’t looking where he was going (we get it, he’s the careless one!)
Handily, Doc can read Russian because of his mysterious and undiscussed past, and tells the crew that the name of the ship is Leviathan, he can also determine (for reasons only known to himself) that the ship was sunk deliberately.
Willie finds out that the ship’s disappearance is being covered up and that there is another vessel called Leviathan half-way around the world.
SIxpack recovered a safe from the ship and after cutting it open they find a video log from the ship’s captain, a large bottle of vodka (which Beck fortunately confiscates) and a small hip flask (which Sixpack hides from the others).
Doc reviews the video log and on it the Russian captain describes how his crew seems to have come down with some mysterious tropical disease and that they are all dying.
The Russians had been playing around with genetic mutation and splicing. It’s not clear what their ultimate goal was but you can infer it was to create a superior soldier of some kind. In order to test their working hypothesis, the crew’s vodka supply was contaminated with the gene splicing material in order to ensure all of the crew consumed it because all Russians are lushes I guess.
The “disease” the Leviathan‘s captain mentions is the onset of the genetic mutations the Russians have unleashed on the crew.
When the experiment goes awry and the crew mutate in ways that weren’t foreseen, the Russian Navy sinks the Leviathan and then renames another vessel to cover up the original ship’s sinking.
The following morning, after he and Bridget have had a few swigs out of the hip flask, Sixpack begins to feel unwell and visits Doc who discovers strange sores all over his body. The infection seems to spread rapidly and he’s dead within a few hours.
With no other crew seemingly showing signs of sickness they request immediate early evacuation from the station but their company handler, Ms Martin (Meg Foster – Masters Of The Universe 1987, They Live 1988) , tells them that a hurricane is moving in and they’ll have to stay where they are for the time being.
Soon though it’s not just the weather they will have to contend with as Sixpack’s corpse has begun to mutate and move around the station.
Fearing the same fate awaits her, Bridgette takes her own life only to be absorbed into the mutant Sixpack-entity.
Can the remaining crew stay alive until rescue comes, or will they succumb to whatever evil creature Sixpack and Bridgette have morphed in to?
The Good
The cast in this is excellent, they really embody their roles as world-weary undersea miners and the banter is top-notch.
While each of the character is put in a rather predictable pigeon hole (leader who doesn’t want to lead, doctor who probably killed a patient, eager new recruit etc.) they bring individuality to the roles that might otherwise have seemed one-dimensional.
The sets are also good and give a sense of how compact and constrained their living conditions are at the bottom of the sea with the maze-like corridors adding to the confusion and chaos of the unfolding events.
The Bad
The special effects (what we see of them anyway) are certainly of their time.
While they are created by the SFX master that is Stan Winston (The Thing 1982, Aliens 1986, Galaxy Quest 1999, Terminator: Dark Fate 2019) when you compare Leviathan‘s practical effects to the CGI effects used in The Abyss 6 months later, the difference is night and day.
Of course when you consider that Leviathan only had a budget of $25 million compared to The Abyss‘ $70+ million and you can see why they opted for practical effects.
This means that when the creature is on screen it’s not for long and you don’t get much detail, it’s also comprised of multiple different types of creature which I think was a decision to get around practical issues of moving the creature around so you have the main “blob” of humans but also somehow tentacles and off-shoot creatures that look like fish or something.
The creature design is really quite an incoherent mess at times!
The Ugly
I wouldn’t say that this is “ugly” as such but there’s no real villain of the piece.
We’re introduced to Ms. Martin who is the CEO of Tri-Oceanic Corp. and therefore in a position of power, of life and death over the characters but she basically just sits on the ‘phone for most of the film not doing much.
There’s the part where she says that the crew can’t be rescued because there is a hurricane coming in but this is never followed up. Was there a hurricane and she really couldn’t send a rescue teams or was she buying time to figure out how to capitalise on what the crew found?
I don’t know, it’s a dangling plot thread that’s never pulled and is really annoying to me.
We also have the characters.
As I said before, they’re very well acted and the cast is stellar, but it’s like the writers (David Webb Peoples – Blade Runner 1982, Unforgiven 1992 and Jeb Stuart – Die Hard 1988, The Fugitive 1993) took the character list from Alien and just swapped the names out:
Dallas > Beck
Ripley > Willie
Brett > Cobb
Parker > Jones
Kane > Sixpack (in the recklessness, not the idiocy or misogyny)
Lambert > Bridgette
Ash > Doc (in that he’s hiding something, not that he’s an android!)The only “new” (should that be unmatched?) character is Rodero.
Once you see the similarities, you can’t unsee them and stop making comparisons.
Final Thoughts
I might have seemed a little harsh in this review but I really did enjoy Leviathan and it is certainly worth a watch despite my complaints!
While I do have issues with how the creature is portrayed on screen this does actually work in the film’s favour in a way as not seeing the monster too much means that it also doesn’t date the film too much!
The character aspects of the film are enough to paper over the cracks that the SFX leaves and will carry you through any iffy dialogue too.
So overall I would recommend Leviathan, while it doesn’t have the high-budget gloss of Cameron’s The Abyss the cast’s acting ability shines through.
Watch this film if you want Alien underwater where no one can still hear you scream.
