The End of Oak Street

Rating 7/10

When it comes to dinosaur movies, Jurassic Park is the undisputed king.  The 1993 blockbuster set a standard that its many sequels have spent more than three decades trying to match.  But it hardly has a monopoly on these prehistoric beasts.  From the stop-motion reptiles of King Kong (1933) and One Million Years B.C. (1966) to the animated charms of The Land Before Time (1988), these memorable creatures have been a source of movie magic for generations.

Now comes a film that proves you don’t need a T. rex-sized budget to make dinosaurs exciting.  In fact, it compares rather favorably to the Jurassic Park sequels.

Set in 1982, this account proudly wears the look and feel of vintage Spielberg and his Amblin productions: tract housing, backyard swimming pools, neighborhood block parties, kids on bikes, and ordinary life interrupted by something extraordinary.  That even extends to the camerawork, with split-diopter shots that keep both foreground characters and distant action in focus, a technique Spielberg famously used in Jaws.

At the center are the Platts.  Denise (Anne Hathaway) is an aspiring novelist questioning her marriage to Greg (Ewan McGregor), who has lost his job and secretly taken to delivering pizzas at night.  Their teenage daughter Audrey (Maisy Stella) dreams of studying astronomy, while younger son Brian (Christian Convery) is more concerned with his dog Starbuck and the girl next door (Jordan Alexa Davis).

I enjoyed the way the flick initially lets the mystery creep slowly into the narrative.  A plant thought extinct for millions of years unexpectedly sprouts up in someone’s lawn.  An enormous pile of unidentified animal droppings turns up in another yard.  Reports warn of intense solar-flare activity.  Then a storm and a blinding flash of light leave Oak Street surrounded by a primeval wilderness.  The residents are suddenly sharing the subdivision with Mesozoic creatures.  Soon Anne Hathaway is prowling through suburbia with a shotgun like she’s been preparing for this day her entire life.

The latest from writer-director David Robert Mitchell is an unexpected turn from the filmmaker behind It Follows and Under the Silver Lake.  Here, his sensibilities are filtered through an overtly Spielbergian lens, aided by co-producer J.J. Abrams (Super 8 and Star Wars: The Force Awakens), who has often worn that influence proudly.

Oh, and don’t worry about how or why any of this has happened.  The End of Oak Street ultimately has simpler ambitions: grab some popcorn and watch massive prehistoric reptiles attack humans.

And boy howdy do they!

Even though it’s packaged like a nostalgic Amblin adventure, the dinosaurs are vicious.  This is a surprisingly violent, hard PG-13.  The attacks are frequent, the deaths can be nasty, and at least one beloved character meets a shocking end that made me question whether I had misread the rating.  Mitchell isn’t particularly shy about letting townsfolk become dinosaur food.

That brutality is also where the uneven tone becomes more noticeable.  This suburban nightmare mixes genuine suspense and gruesome kills with family drama and a breezy sense of humor.  The fusion mostly works, but the spirit is much jokier than the circumstances warrant.  A ghastly death is frequently followed by a flippant reaction that dissipates the tension.  The death of the irate neighbor (P.J. Byrne), for example, is played for laughs, with the attitude “He was a jerk, so who cares?”  The pervasive mood gives the developments a certain weightlessness.

I didn’t need the production to be grim or self-serious, but I wish Mitchell trusted that scares are stronger when you don’t undercut them with levity.  The discovery of a gigantic pile of animal droppings in an immaculate yard is a joke, and residents continue to behave like eccentrics when they should be in survival mode.  The screenplay still wants its predators to be genuinely terrifying, but it incongruously keeps the vibe lighthearted.

Still, on the most basic level, The End of Oak Street delivers.  Dinosaurs show up.  People get chased.  A lot are eaten.  The family is scattered across the neighborhood and must find one another while trying to survive, regularly making spectacularly stupid decisions that invite an audience to yell at the screen.  “Stay inside!” is my favorite.  It’s silly, disposable fun and best experienced with a lively crowd.  There’s nothing especially profound or lasting about it, but sometimes a dinosaur movie doesn’t need to be.

08-13-26