Oh good grief.
Low production values. Special effects that are twenty years out of date. Dull and sometimes flailing direction. Humble and bland writing. A monster movie with a rather unimaginative monster. The transparent themes of human consumption of resources and destruction of life are admirable, but can 100% be found in other, far better films. We've seen this film both before and since, many times over, and done in ways that were better and more interesting. There are few standards by which 'The cremators' isn't a dud.
I guess the filming locations are nice. Some parts of the music would be okay if they weren't so repetitive; others are just overdone. The cast do their job on a baseline level. There is a story here, but it's meagerly written, and plot development is piecemeal. Between the sequencing, pacing, and the mere fact of some of the more questionable ideas that were thrown in, a title that is barely over seventy minutes long crawls laboriously. I suppose there are some good ideas here, but are they worth so much as to warrant sitting through an affair that's mostly so uniformly taxing as a viewing experience? I don't think so.
'The cremators' isn't the worst thing you could watch, yet this is a picture that is wholly unable to carry a spark, or build any excitement, even in those moments when it's mostly clearly trying to, including the climax. All the sincere effort that anyone put into it can't overcome a flat tone, weak construction, and notions that couldn't be picked out in a crowd. It's not that it's abjectly bad, but that there's simply no reason to sit for it in the first place. Yawn.
