EDITOR’S NOTE: Unfortunately, as of 7/4/23, Disney has decided to permanently remove Crater from Disney+. While unconfirmed, this growing practice has been seen amongst other streaming platforms, and used in order to be able to write off the “content assets” on the company’s taxes in order to lower their tax bill, in addition to lowering the licensing fees the company must pay. This practice is highly disturbing, and is essentially removing the media that people who’ve worked extremely hard on across all areas of film production as if it never existed in the first place. While the film is no longer available to watch, we have decided to leave this review up in order to preserve it’s memory in some capacity.
Crater is a brand-new Disney+ original film that follows 5 teenagers as they set out to visit a crater on a moon colony in the year 2257 before the main character, Caleb, sets off on a journey to “Omega”, a paradise planet, years away from his home on the moon. Caleb doesn’t want to do this, but because his father died in the mines on the Lunar Colony, he is stuck in this plan already in motion.
I was initially quite surprised at how little buzz I had seen regarding this movie. Disney has a tendency to want to hype up their projects at least in some way. Even Disney original films like Chang Can Dunk were getting the proper treatment from the Disney marketing department. Yet, with Crater, it seemed that no one cared. Maybe it had to do with the film’s mostly unknown cast, with the exception of Kid Cudi, who has continued to showcase his real acting talents in addition to his talents with a microphone.
What drew me in immediately to the film was how evident it was that the filmmakers cared deeply about their characters. They seemed to really take the time to give each of the 5 main characters something interesting to their background, while also providing a dynamic between them all that was fun to watch on screen. This comes as no surprise when I learned that Crater comes from the producers of Stranger Things, probably the best example of great child characters and group dynamics amongst teens that we have available now.
Unfortunately, beyond the great characters, the film begins to falter. Visually, I wasn’t very impressed with how everything looked. The Lunar Colony looked tiny and bland. The visuals on the moon don’t really hold up even to standards from 5 years ago, let alone today. Worst of all, when we finally see Omega, its completely underwhelming. It didn’t give me “paradise” vibes that the film laid out at all.
Now, we can contribute many of these issues to the film having a small budget, yet it’s not an excusable reason. Films like 2016’s Arrival, which had a budget less than the 53 million Crater had, impressed visually on all fronts in a film about aliens arriving on Earth. 2015’s Ex Machina had a budget of 15 million dollars and won best visual effects at that year’s Academy Awards. Both these films and many more are lightyears ahead of what Crater accomplished with the money they had available.
Worst of all, though, was how wholly uninteresting the story was. It was just not engaging. The filmmakers needed to add more conflict to the story in some way or change the end goal to make things interesting. Otherwise, all we saw was the kids saying they want to do something, doing it, and then moving on to the next thing. It felt like the stakes were at zero even with the looming arrival of Caleb’s trip to Omega.
Final Thoughts
I appreciated greatly how much care went into each character, and how well thought out they made each character’s story. Each brought something totally unique. I also enjoyed just how well the film deals with topics like gay couples or family tragedy. They give the appropriate amount of care to each situation. It’s unfortunate then that the rest of the film is just average enough to be forgettable. If anything, this is a film that kids would enjoy for the concept of being in space and traveling on the moon, but there’s really no other reason to watch this movie.
