Alright, to be fair to "Leviathan," it's not EXACTLY the same movie as "The Abyss," and while they both did come out in 1989, "Leviathan" did come out first by about 6 months. But then again, "The Abyss" was such a massive undertaking that they probably wrote, shot, edited and released "Leviathan" while James Cameron was still filming.
"Leviathan" was brought to us by George P Cosmatos, a director who's work was strange in that it's usually not very good, but most of it is still entertaining. "Rambo: First Blood Part II" and "Tombstone" both immediately come to mind. Here with this movie however, it's so similar to other films like "The Abyss" and "Alien" and "The Thing" that were made by much better directors like James Cameron, Ridley Scott and John Carpenter, that it really takes a hard hit. This is one of those "Damn, I could be watching something exactly like this but way better" movies.
They'd better be careful. I hear Ebirah is in the area...
A mining operation on the ocean floor finds a sunken Russian submarine, which seems to have gone down for no good reason. Salving some random things from the sub brings aboard a virus which kills and then mutates the crew members into a monster, picking them off one by one until there's only a few leave to escape. There's also the traditional "greedy corporation that doesn't care" angle going on as well, which is pretty expected for films like this. Since, you know, that was in "Alien."
The effects work is actually not that bad for a movie of this caliber. It's honestly a bit better than I was expecting when going into it. The monster is sufficiently gross and the blood and guts are enough to make you think about wincing when one of the dudes gets a 4-foot long parasitic worm with rows of teeth on him, which proceeds to do its best to find out the color of the human lungs by eating its way to it. It's never very believable, but I've seen worse.
Besides the contrived setup, the issue really plaguing "Leviathan" is the cast. I think Peter Weller was still under the impression that he was playing Alex Murphy after becoming Robocop with the amount of emotional range he has on display here. Hell, at least Robocop had an excuse for deadpanning everything. It's a strange because I know Weller is a good actor, but he's slumming it here big time. Dude does not seem to want to be there.
Pro-tip: Just because you say it really sleepily and add a "MOTHAFUCKA" to the end doesn't change the fact that you stole a line from "Jaws."
Three other things about the cast: Ernie Hudson is awesome, Daniel Stern does not make a very convincing sex-fiend because he's Daniel freaking Stern, and you can't convince me that Richard Crenna and Bryan Cranston aren't the same person. Seriously. I have a sneaking suspicion that Crenna did not die in 2003. He just found being on "Malcom in The Middle" far too time consuming to be both Richard Crenna and Bryan Cranston at the same time, so he just killed off one of his personas. How he pulled it off before I'm not sure.
"Come on, Rambo. Take the mission. Then afterwards we'll make meth. It'll be great."
That's about all I have for "Leviathan." I suppose I've seen worse monster movies, and at the very least the damn thing wasn't CGI, which made it a lot better than if it had been made in say, the late 90's or 2000's. So there's that.
Check out the trailer for "Leviathan."
THE BOTTOM LINE - "Leviathan" is an alright, if forgettable sci-fi horror film that will make you feel like you're watching someone do an imitation of better movies. It's not horrible, it's just kind of bland. But it works as a late night creature feature.
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