Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

I like undersea horror movies, most are usually watchable. Leviathan has the Robocop actor Peter Weller in the lead as the captain of the undersea expedition but I felt his role could have been better(especially towards the climax) although he delivers well. The late Richard Crenna gives good support to Weller as the doc of the team. The rest of the cast are pretty decent too.The movie gets quite creepy in the first half and a little into the second half but then stumbles. Some scenes seem to have been inspired by Ridley Scott's Alien. The mutant is not shown completely until towards the end, but unlike in Alien, the portrayal of the creature in the earlier scenes is weakly managed in the movie.Leviathan is still watchable though, as what the movie may lack in visuals or effects of top grossers like Sphere, Alien or an Abyss, it makes up with sincere performances and suspense.

Let's get he obvious out of the way: Ridley Scott's 'Alien' set the precedence for all films of the sci-fi horror genre, even if the protagonist isn't a monster from the dark reaches of our imagination, I more so mean in the visual aesthetic and tone: lighting, mood, shooting style, set design — anything that bases itself around being both terrifying and off-world, and with a dash (or copious amounts) of thematic human ignorance, owes itself to this film.This Leviathan (not to be confused with the Russian one from 2014) is one of those perceived Hollywood moments where more of the winning formula equals best for business. Between the mid-70's and late 80's was a time for a cinematic revolution of sorts. You had the first in many juggernaut franchises: Rocky, Star Wars, The Terminator, the aforementioned Alien, as well as singular cinematic classics: The Shining, The Godfather, The Thing (lots of "The's") — RoboCop and Jaws. Particularly of these last two, Leviathan does something quite intuitive in response to the movie market and of that time in cinema: What if we took a rising star (Peter Weller), a good looking cast, and combined three of the best and most successful horror films in the last decade (Alien, The Thing, Jaws).Well, you get Leviathan, a movie truly of it's time in all sense of that statement. That's not to say the movie is bad, it's actually quite interesting. The pacing is there; the build and anticipation as well as a little trans-governmental conspiratorial paranoia thrown into the mix — because the best intentions of humankind are ultimately, always the biggest bad guy. However, unlike the films that it shares company with, the reveal of the 'creature' is ultimately underwhelming, more so confusing. It's not fully explained what is it, possibly the closest thing is the Creature from the Black Lagoon, though that already has it's own film (1954). The body horror employed here is interesting in it's premise — it acts like a skin lesion that evolves into full blow leprosy which first kills it's host before birthing the creature life form — but then there's chest bursting, face morphing, tentacle wrapping, all of which feels too familiar.If you have a rainy Sunday and you feel like some legit scares, or fan service in the form of female scientists in 80's aerobic gear or rocking ascots, then watch this film. It may or may not be worth it, especially for Weller's well (poorly) timed punchline at the very end.

I have now seen this film a few times, and have come to the conclusion that Leviathan is a shallow movie about the deep ocean. The premise is really the only interesting aspect of Leviathan, while the special effects, story line, and character development are lacking in quality. First, the SFX of this film are truly sub-par. Even though I understand the limits of practical effects, the effects in Leviathan are not convincing at all, and the designs are poor and lifeless. Compared to similar films, such as Alien (1979) and The Thing (1982), the special effects come off as cheap. This pulled me out of the film every time I saw the ridiculous lumbering mountain of wet rubber that was the ultimate monster. Second, the story line is basically a rehashing of Alien, expect taking place on Earth. It borrows heavily from The Thing as well, which all three have the archetypal scifi-horror story of finding a horrible creature trapped for eons, that is freed and subsequently wrecks havoc on the human characters. This in itself not a huge issue for me, but Leviathan added no interesting twist on this template, it just filled in the blanks. Third, the character development remained a low priority on the filmmakers mind. The characters are flat, and expendable. Peter Weller's character is the most developed, but still doesn't fill the necessary depth I need to care about him. In fact, the characters felt like a rip off of The Thing, even the Doc had a similar fate to Blair in The Thing. The spoiler part of this review is about the atrocious ending. It felt slapped on and shallow. The ending made this film go from just okay to bad.

So back in 89 there was a spate of deep sea movies which included James Cameron's 'The Abyss', that movie was the only one to actually do well. I guess its a little ironic that the only other deep sea flick that was of any worth at this time was this movie which just happened to completely and utterly rip off Cameron's previous two mega hits of the era.So the plot here is basically 'Alien' combined with 'Aliens' and 'The Abyss' along with various other horror movies such as 'The Thing'. A small team of undersea miners are on the ocean floor erm...mining stuff, when along the line one crew member discovers a sunken Russian vessel which contains a deadly secret. This turns out to be a mutagen of some kind that infects a crew member killing him, his body then begins to mutate into a sea creature and I'm sure you can guess how this goes.The general idea is not completely identical to the James Cameron 80's filmography, the creature is basically a toxic mutant which is made up of the various dead crew members. This thing absorbs its victims intellect and is physically formed by the crew members bodies...or something like that. The crew members don't appear to be completely dead, more like trapped within this creatures body or they are being slowly absorbed/digested (?). Anyhow the visual design is not entirely shown in the movie, its kept out of sight and hidden behind lots of steel pipes, but what you do see revolves around tentacles (as usual) and snapping maws. The look of of the beast and the way it mutates does run along similar lines to John Carpenter's 'The Thing' where as everything else is 'Alien' within the set of 'The Abyss'.Put it this way the special effects are a solid example of old fashioned hands-on craftsmanship with plenty of blood gore goo and body shock horror, the good old days. Despite the fact Stan Winston, Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr. worked on the effects they aren't the best you will see, like I say they are solid and fun for fanboys of the craft but the other movies of the day were better examples. I think the creature is mostly hidden because they knew it wasn't too good, earlier in the film the smaller leech type things were effective but the main creature is a bit of a lifeless lump.The deep sea base set does actually look pretty good with some obviously solid production values in play. Again if you think of the Nostromo and the Deep Core combined then you have a good idea of the visuals. Lots of metal corridors, pipes, gratings, the odd beige coloured medical bay, beige living quarters etc...its all too familiar really. I did like the deep sea diving suits they use which have a nice futuristic realistic look, more like space suits admittedly but that tends to be the way with these types of movies.Although not actually filmed under the sea the film does look very good with some brilliant use of indoor sets, heavy mist and lighting, it does look as though its on the ocean floor. This is helped by good camera angles with the crew in their suits when walking around, a great submerged Russian shipwreck and lots of little floating bits in front of the camera to simulate the deep moving ocean.I guess overall this movie is just way too much of a carbon copy of the other movies I've mentioned. The characters are all extremely clichéd and look like they've just stepped off the set of the 'Alien' franchise. Richard Crenna would be the Ash/Bishop character, Ernie Hudson is Parker, Daniel Stern would be Brett/Hudson, Eilbacher would be Lambert etc...and yes I did just mention Daniel Stern who was totally miscast incidentally oh and his characters name is Sixpack. Along with that the plot trundles by exactly the same as the Scott/Cameron flicks. I mean exactly the same right down to the self destruct finale with loud computer countdown, the company knowing all about the mutagen and setting the crew up and ridiculously similar weapons including the obligatory flame thrower. The finale doesn't really help its case either with a brief shark attack that ends just as quickly as its starts, the coastguard flying overhead at the exact moment the survivors surface and the fact the beastie seemingly comes back from its watery grave. Its a bizarre finale really as we see the creature getting crushed and then the entire deep sea base implodes...yet it manages to survive.The movie then still continues as we see Peter Weller getting his own back on the company director or representative by punching her out!! he knocks out a woman! Everything about the finale just feels tacked on and rushed, as though they weren't sure what to do...and it really shows. It is a fun deep sea thriller but its not very scary truth be told and in an era of sci-fi classics this movie fell well short I'm afraid, but its not a total loss.6/10