Leviathan was one of a trio of late-80s movies, along with The Abyss and DeepStar Six, set in sea floor habitats miles beneath the surface of the water. In this case, the crew are deep-sea miners. Peter Weller, Richard Crenna and Amanda Pays head up a decent cast of stereotypical misfits. Weller is the intellectually overqualified station boss. Crenna is the intellectually overqualified station doctor. Pays is the intellectually overqualified station babe.

Leviathan starts off well enough. The miners are on the bottom working a site when they stumble across a mysterious Soviet shipwreck, of which there is no record of having ever sunk. Naturally they find a video tape on it that hints at some terrible danger, while the station screw-up locates a bottle of vodka, which he secretly scarfs.

Up until this point, there's a fair amount of claustrophobic tension in the recycled air, as well as a decent amount of dive footage, but here the movie starts laying deep-sea eggs. One by one, crew members begin transmogrifying with a ridiculous deep-sea monster. Dive time decreases dramatically as the plot degenerates into a hokey Alien rip-off. No matter how many times we see it, we still expect Sigourney Weaver to show up at the end. She never does.

Leviathan is not much of a movie and there's just not enough underwater footage to save it from itself. Too bad.