I remember watching some talk show where the host and another character went deep sea diving and mentioned a movie that had deep sea diving where they all die at the end. I recalled it as The Deep, so I saw that movie at Wal-Mart for 10 bucks, so I bought it and found a rather dull wreck-diving movie. So I asked my dad “What’s the movie where they all die at the end?” he said “Leviathan I think.” So years went by, I am once again at Wal-Mart and saw this film for 6 bucks and it immediately reminded me of that conversation. So I read the synopsis, saw that it had Peter Weller and Ernie Hudson, directed by George P. Cosmatos who directed one of the greatest westerns ever made; Tombstone. As well as this being a deep sea horror film, very few of those exist so I was intrigued.

What I got was a movie that was so blatantly ripping off 3 other movies it was nearly insulting. I can forgive a movie that has lame special effects because it’s old, but this was made in 1989, that’s not that old! The first creature we see, is seen scuttling across the floor, however it’s 8 legs didn’t move at all. Alien was made 10 years before and it’s special effects still stand up against most of today’s films! The movie takes most of its “inspiration” from Alien, including some almost frame for frame identical shots. They even have the only black character as the mechanic. (Yaphet Kotto as Parker anyone?)Lets see who else we can compare to…Peter Weller as Tom Skerrit’s character Dallas. Richard Crenna as Ian Holm’s mysterious scientist character Ash, also combined with A. Wilford Brimley’s character from The Thing in terms of cutting off the crew from being rescued…the list goes on. There’s the flamethrowers of course, from both movies yet they do almost nothing against a SEA creature that’s soaking wet! MY GOD! Who’d a thunk it!? Not to mention the flamethrowers “jam” when sticking it directly under pouring water to shoot the creature. The creature gestates inside people (alien) but then takes over and molds their cells together (The Thing) The one thing that impressed me is that at the very end of the film the last 3 survivors (it was obvious at that point that this movie was already too predictable and I knew my dad was mistaken and they wouldn’t all die) One of the survivors was Ernie Hudson! I thought to myself “My god! Out of all the clichés in the movie, they didn’t buy into one of the most common ones, the token black guy getting killed!” Then of course in the last 2 minutes of the movie the creature comes out of the water and instead of swimming towards the helicopter that landed in the water to rescue them, Ernie Hudson swims TOWARDS the creature in order to allow the others time to escape! The movie’s one redeeming feature was flushed down the toilet.

If you haven’t seen any of the aforementioned movies (The Abyss, Alien, The Thing) you might enjoy this movie. I understand that not all movies can have the budget or script strength of those films, but…there could at least be effort. All in all, I’m not angry I bought it for 6 bucks but it won’t be one I’ll watch again any time soon.