It goes back to ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth’ The script was a clothesline for him to use his talents - which were enough in this case - especially considering the film was much shorter than anything he had done in a long time.
There’s a bit difference between the stuff in JCE and having aliens a couple of hours worth of excavation under New Jersey. He films bad scripts, so he makes them all pretty, but they’re still bad scripts.