Given John Bruno's pedigree as an Oscar-winning visual-effects artist and James Cameron protégé, one would hope his directorial debut offered up some dazzling thrills. However, not only is his sci-fi horror lacking in plot, but he also adds insult to injury by making the effects merely tarnished knock-offs of The Terminator, The Abyss and Aliens. The crew of a sinking tugboat takes refuge on a deserted Russian science vessel during a typhoon only to find it harbouring an alien energy force. Derivative of everything from Leviathan to Deep Rising, Bruno's hybrid mass of genre clichés simply joins the dots and only entertains on a schlock level. Jamie Lee Curtis, William Baldwin and Donald Sutherland give undistinguished performances in this terror tripe, with the final robot monster looking more like a mobile junkyard than anything truly scary.

When the crew of an American tugboat boards an abandoned Russian research vessel, the alien life form aboard regards them as a virus which must be destroyed.