PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Picture this, if you will. A group of miners are trapped in an enclosed space with a big monster on the loose trying to kill them one by one, and the company they work for is responsible for it. You may be thinking “Ah, Alien” right? WRONG! 10 years after a group of miners were trapped in space, a group of miners are trapped in the bottom of the ocean in LEVIATHAN.
So what is Leviathan about? A group of miners are mining precious ore from the bottom of the ocean for three months. The team leader is Beck (Peter Weller – Robocop) and he supervises the crew of Cobb (Hector Elizondo – The Princess Diaries), Doc (Richard Crenna – First Blood), Willie (Amanda Pays –Spacejacked), Sixpack (Daniel Stern – Home Alone), Jones (Ernie Hudson – Ghostbusters), DeJesus (Michael Carmine – Invasion USA), and Bowman (Lisa Elibacher – Beverly Hills Cop). Beck answers to Ms. Martin (Meg Foster – They Live) and they have just fourdays left before they go home.
During a routine work day, Sixpack picks up a crab and leaves it in his suit to scare Willie as a prank. To get him back, Willie leaves the crab in Sixpack’s bunk causing them to cause a scene in front of everyone. Beck punishes both of them by working half a day just the two of them the next day. Sixpack accidentally slips and falls over a ridge into unexplored territory and Willie goes after him. Willie and Sixpack find a Russian boat named “Leviathan” that looks to have been sunk by torpedo fire. Bowman pulls up on the computer that Leviathan is supposed to be in the Baltic Sea, not here.
Sixpack brings a whole box of stuff back to the mining shack where Doc finds the Captain’s (Eugene Lipinski – Superman 2) log on videotape and Sixpack swipes a flask of vodka. The log reveals something terrible happened with the crew that spiraled out of control and Doc questions why the Russian’s sunk their own ship. Meanwhile Sixpack and Bowman drink from the flask and the next day Sixpack get sick. Without spoiling the rest, let’s just say what happens to the Russians happens to Beck’s crew. Can they make it out of there alive? Watch the movie and find out.
The bread and butter of Leviathan are the characters. All of them have loveable quirks, one liners and purpose. Cobb is the ultimate straight man who knows the rulebook inside and out, Sixpack is your stereotypical sleazeball while DeJesus just wants to get out of there so he can go on vacation. Bowman wants to have fun while the introvert Willie just does her own thing. But once all hell breaks loose, everyone starts dealing with it in different ways. DeJesus and Willie just want to forget everything happened while Jones freaks out once people start dying. Beck has to hold everything together and the stress gets to everyone. The acting in this was phenomenal from some of the best of the 80’s. Even if the script was more or less a combination of The Abyss, Alien and The Thing.
Now for the drawbacks. As I mentioned earlier, the script is more or less an Alien clone. Instead of miners deep in space, they’re on the ocean floor. Instead of being sent on a suicide mission, the company just declares them dead. Otherwise, Parker from Alien and Jones from Leviathan are eerily similar. The kills themselves are lackluster and primarily off-screen. The special effects do make the monsters look intimidating but you barely see them for one reason or another.
The only other nitpick is in the beginning of the movie, DeJesus has a suit malfunction and while the crew is desperately trying to get him inside to safety, Doc is nowhere to be found. Beck reports to Ms. Martin who says he does have insubordination on his record, but this was day 87 of 90, Beck didn’t already know this? If you can handle lackluster kills and a script almost a direct clone of Alien, then this will be a fun watch.
Now for the million dollar question, did it do well? No, it did not. The budget for Leviathan was 21 million while it grossed only 19 million in the United States and Italy. Roger Ebert actually liked it, but Gene Siskel did not, though he did praise the acting. That seems to be the only thing universally agreed was the characters were loveable whether or not the script and effects were good. One sad note, seven months after the film was released in the United States, Michael Carmine died of AIDS. R.I.P. Carmine.
Personally, I loved the movie. The one liners from Leviathan were great, I dug the acting, and dug when all hell broke loose. Not everyone will agree, but to me it was fun to watch. That’s the key word: FUN! Don’t expect Driving Miss Daisy (Best Picture in 1989) out of a movie about genetically mutating underwater miners.
Leviathan is available to rent and own on digital platforms and is streaming on HBO Max. Multiple Blu-ray editions are also available from Scream Factory and Kino Lorber.
