Like many other people, I first heard about Crater when people started to report on how it had been quietly removed from the Disney+ streaming service, commenting on how it was a decent little film that now had no platform (certainly for the time being). Intrigued, and keen to fight back against this insidious form of complete censorship, I endeavoured to seek it out and give it a fair shake. And I'm glad I did. Crater is a really good little movie, surprising and surprisingly poignant in equal measure.
Isaiah Russell-Bailey plays Caleb, a young boy who lives in a mining colony on the moon, but is due to head to the colonized planet of Omega. You can normally get to Omega after working for decades to pay for your opportunity, but Caleb is being allowed to go there after the death of his miner father, who died in a mining accident. He doesn't want to go to Omega though. But he does want to visit a crater that his father always told him he should see when he was old enough. Enlisting the help of his friends, Dylan (Billy Barratt), Borney (Orson Hong), and Marcus (Thomas Boyce), as well as a girl named Addison (Mckenna Grace) who has some valuable information that could ensure the success of their "mission", Caleb heads out to the crater. On the way, the children share secrets with one another, and various jeopardies strengthen their bond.
Written by John Griffin, and directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez, neither man being an obvious choice for this kind of material, Crater is a real treat for what you get onscreen alongside all of the expected plot beats. Yes, there are the usual ups and downs, and a lot of the third act plays out exactly as you think it will, but there are also one or two revelations that feel genuinely unexpected, especially couched within a standard Disney movie. I certainly didn't think the film would also comment on the idea of modernised indentured servitude, using the life of a lunar miner to show how the odds are stacked against anyone working hard throughout their entire life to make a better future for their children. It's a brilliantly-crafted look at the overhwelming odds stacked against anyone seeking a "golden ticket", yet offsets the bitterness with a look at how we can always have so much else enriching our lives in a way that money itself cannot (although I do enjoy the push back against the awful "money can't buy happiness" line with the rebuttal that it sure doesn't hurt).
The cast aren't bad, in line with what you need for the material, and Russell-Bailey is strong enough in the lead role to deal with the wide range of emotions that he goes through. Barratt, Hong, and Boyce are also very good, and Grace changes the group dynamic beautifully without having to overact or be the party-pooper, which she so easily could have been. They're not the most memorable bunch of film characters I've ever seen, but that's due to the script trying to keep them grounded and real, as opposed to turning each character into one amplified defining feature, and that makes them all worth spending time with, especially during a third act that had me struggling to stop the sniffles and tears that were brought on by the bittersweet ending.
I wish I'd seen this when it was on Disney+, but I just wasn't aware of it when it was on that platform, but I'm glad I decided to seek it out now. I encourage others to do the same, even if I wouldn't normally recommend such dubious means of watching recent movies. Shame on Disney+ for getting rid of something that everyone should have been able to stumble upon, a gem of a film that would have only grown in popularity if given the chance, and I hope that film fans can seek it out and, whether you end up agreeing with me or not, rebel against the mismanagement of titles that deserve to retain their very small patch of streaming platform space.
8/10
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