It came out the same year as DeepStar Six (1989) and it has to be said that DeepStar Six is by far the better movie.
Leviathan is an Alien rip-off and it doesn’t even pretend to be anything else. If you’ve always wanted to see an Alien rip-off but set underwater then this is your movie. OK, there are elements borrowed from other movies such as The Thing but the core of this movie is Alien.
Leviathan was an Italo-American co-production, shot mostly in Italy.
The action takes place in a mining facility known as Shack 7, deep beneath the sea. Really deep. As in 16,000 feet deep.
Geologist Steven Beck (Peter Weller) is in charge. He’s not sure if he’s suited to being in command and his crew isn’t sure either. The crew of eight is the collection of misfits you expect in a movie like this. They have three days of a three-month contract to go and they really are fed up and there is some tension.
They have super high tech diving suits that are more like miniature diving vessels than conventional diving suits.
One crew members falls off an underwater cliff. He survives, and makes an extraordinary discovery. It’s a wrecked ship. The name of the ship is Leviathan and it’s obviously Russian. He salvages a chest from the wreck and that turns out to be a big mistake.
The surprise comes when the crew of Shack 7 do a computer check. The Russians are adamant that the Leviathan has not been lost at sea, and in fact there should be no wrecked ships of any kind in this vicinity.
There’s something else odd that suggests something surprising about the ship’s fate.
Of course there is something very very bad aboard that wrecked ship.
Beck has been in contact with his boss on the surface. We know as soon as she opens her mouth that we are dealing with an Evil Girlboss who would sell her own mother down the river to advance her career.
Soon the crew of Shack 7 find themselves confronting unthinkable horrors, and being trapped in an undersea complex with unthinkable horrors is no fun at all.
While, unlike Alien, it doesn’t have the input of the visual genius of H.R. Giger it still looks reasonably impressive. The undersea mining complex looks high tech but just a bit grungy. Wisely this is not overdone. Shack 7 doesn’t look like a scrap heap, it just looks like a place where people actually live and work. It’s not brightly lit but the shadows and darkness are not overdone.
The special effects are serviceable enough. The diving suits are very cool.
It’s meant to be exciting and scary, and it is. It’s a scary movie where people are trapped and cannot escape and that’s usually an effective trope. And they don’t fully comprehend the nature and extent of the threat.
It’s generally well-executed and well-acted. Leviathan is more of an old-fashioned drive-in movie than an 80s blockbuster and perhaps critics expected too much of it. It does what it sets out to do and does it pretty well. And personally I love underwater adventures and thrillers. Recommended.
Leviathan looks good on Blu-Ray.
I’ve also reviewed DeepStar Six (1989).
I’ve reviewed other George P. Cosmatos movies and they’re a mixed bag but generally enjoyable. The Cassandra Crossing (1976) and Escape to Athena (1979) have an off-kilter charm and Cobra (1986) is of course a masterpiece.
Leviathan is an Alien rip-off and it doesn’t even pretend to be anything else. If you’ve always wanted to see an Alien rip-off but set underwater then this is your movie. OK, there are elements borrowed from other movies such as The Thing but the core of this movie is Alien.
Leviathan was an Italo-American co-production, shot mostly in Italy.
The action takes place in a mining facility known as Shack 7, deep beneath the sea. Really deep. As in 16,000 feet deep.
Geologist Steven Beck (Peter Weller) is in charge. He’s not sure if he’s suited to being in command and his crew isn’t sure either. The crew of eight is the collection of misfits you expect in a movie like this. They have three days of a three-month contract to go and they really are fed up and there is some tension.
They have super high tech diving suits that are more like miniature diving vessels than conventional diving suits.
One crew members falls off an underwater cliff. He survives, and makes an extraordinary discovery. It’s a wrecked ship. The name of the ship is Leviathan and it’s obviously Russian. He salvages a chest from the wreck and that turns out to be a big mistake.
The surprise comes when the crew of Shack 7 do a computer check. The Russians are adamant that the Leviathan has not been lost at sea, and in fact there should be no wrecked ships of any kind in this vicinity.
There’s something else odd that suggests something surprising about the ship’s fate.
Of course there is something very very bad aboard that wrecked ship.
Beck has been in contact with his boss on the surface. We know as soon as she opens her mouth that we are dealing with an Evil Girlboss who would sell her own mother down the river to advance her career.
Soon the crew of Shack 7 find themselves confronting unthinkable horrors, and being trapped in an undersea complex with unthinkable horrors is no fun at all.
While, unlike Alien, it doesn’t have the input of the visual genius of H.R. Giger it still looks reasonably impressive. The undersea mining complex looks high tech but just a bit grungy. Wisely this is not overdone. Shack 7 doesn’t look like a scrap heap, it just looks like a place where people actually live and work. It’s not brightly lit but the shadows and darkness are not overdone.
The special effects are serviceable enough. The diving suits are very cool.
It’s meant to be exciting and scary, and it is. It’s a scary movie where people are trapped and cannot escape and that’s usually an effective trope. And they don’t fully comprehend the nature and extent of the threat.
It’s generally well-executed and well-acted. Leviathan is more of an old-fashioned drive-in movie than an 80s blockbuster and perhaps critics expected too much of it. It does what it sets out to do and does it pretty well. And personally I love underwater adventures and thrillers. Recommended.
Leviathan looks good on Blu-Ray.
I’ve also reviewed DeepStar Six (1989).
I’ve reviewed other George P. Cosmatos movies and they’re a mixed bag but generally enjoyable. The Cassandra Crossing (1976) and Escape to Athena (1979) have an off-kilter charm and Cobra (1986) is of course a masterpiece.
No comments:
Post a Comment