Review of Leviathan (1989) by Bobby K — 11 Jan 2008

What I don't understand is everyone says this movie is nothing but an Alien ripoff, and while in some cases that's true....the simple fact is its a good movie if you don't look at it that way. The plot to Alien was that a group of miners in outer space are woken up from hibernation after a long shift to respond to a stress signal but what they don't know is that they're really supposed to bring back an Alien. Leviathan is a group of miners 2 miles below the sea unknowingly stumble upon a sunk russian boat and all the sailors dead from what turned out to be genetic mutation. I can understand the similiarities where both movies the characters are miners and there was a cover up for the situation ready, but other than that its two entirely different stories. The crew of Alien was supposed to search out the aliens while the crew of Leviathan accidentally stumbled upon everything. Meg Foster's character tried to cover everything up in the end but at first I doubt she knew or had any intention of sending Peter Weller and company to certain death. So now that I've cleared that up, on with the review...

I thought the cast was incredible. Peter Weller always was underrated and I say he shined better in this than in Robocop. Amanda Pays was GORGEOUS in this movie, just hearing her british accent makes her even more beautiful. Richard Crenna, Lisa Elibacher and Michael Carmine did their best to fill out the roster while Daniel Stern, Hector Elizondo and Ernie Hudson were their usual selves. Hell, Daniel Stern had the best lines in the movie, why'd they have to kill him off so fast? Meg Foster freaks me out, even in They Live she was freaky but this takes the cake, she scared me more than the Leviathan monsters.

The only negatives I can think of were the opening scene where Doc (Crenna) took the day off and wasn't there when Dejesus (Carmine) almost imploded. Beck (Weller) then has to chastise Doc the next morning, for him not being there, which is where reality doesn't jive. They're 2 miles below sea level meaning he had to have been somewhere inside the mining shack, how can you convince the audience that someone "can't be found" in a closed environment like that? Not to mention how he can take a "sick" day if he himself was perfectly fine in the beforementioned closed environment?

The positives are everywhere, the one liners, the thrillride when the shyt hits the fan, the ending scene. I don't want to give away too much but needless to say if you liked Alien I'm pretty sure you'll like this movie. The highlight of the movie was when Doc starts getting excited about the idea of genetic mutation and how people could possibly live underwater so Beck scoffs and says "Well what if we run out of airplanes, do we just grow a whole bunch of bird people?".

3 out of 5.