When the salvage tug Sea Star is caught unprepared in a violent storm, it slowly sinks, and the crew, led by Captain Everton (Donald Sutherland), wander upon another ship for refuge. The ship, apparently deserted, turns out to be a Russian research vessel loaded with high-tech electronics. The Sea Star crew, which includes hot-head Kelly "Kit" Foster (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Steve Baker (William Baldwin), soon find that they are not alone, and they also learn the horrible fate of the original crew. The ship had taken on an energy-based alien life-form capable of constructing bodies out of human tissue as easily as electronic parts. The life-form wants to inhabit the planet earth but first must rid the world of the virus that infects it and could kill it -- man. John Bruno, special effects supervisor on Terminator 2 tries to reinvent the haunted house sub-genre in his directorial debut, much as Ridley Scott did in Alien.