Pluskylang Great Film overall

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

lojitsu A-Z Horror Movie of the Day..."Leviathan" (R - 1989 - US)Sub-Genre: MonsterMy Score: 6.8Cast=7 Acting=8 Plot=7 Ending=8 Story=6 Scare=7 Jump=6 F/X=6 Monster=8 Gore=5Underwater deep-sea miners encounter a Soviet wreck and bring back a dangerous cargo to their base on the ocean floor with horrifying results. The crew of the mining base must fight to survive against a genetic mutation that hunts them down one by one. "Look at my foot! This bitch put a goddamn sea monster in my bunk!" You don't know the half of it, buddy! This movie was trying to be "John Carpenter's The Thing" except the water was a liquid instead of a solid. It didn't live up to that, but I liked it anyway. Solid action, good acting, and a strong ending is exactly what I wanted from an 80's horror movie. I'm sure Peter Weller wanted to be Robocop (I know I did), but hey we can't have our cake and eat it too.

Steve Chilcote So its a movie about an unwanted visitor into an enclosed and isolated ship (sound familiar?). Very predictable, characters are all stereotyped and done with a story line straight from the best SF movie ever made - "Alien". I gave it a 5 strictly because it held my interest, but at the end I wanted to say to myself, "Really? That's it?". Glad I didn't pay to see in theater.

manjodude 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.

Michael Yee 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.