The End of Oak Street: Movie Review

Cast: Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella, Christian Convery
Director: David Robert Mitchell

If you've ever wanted to see a dinosaur film where the dinos are rapacious, then It Follows director David Robert Mitchell has just the thing for you.

But be warned, while the execution follows the concept, the answers are not really forthcoming in a romp that has echoes of 1980s family films, pushed to the extreme edges of what's considered family friendly in a movie.

It's a very familiar set-up - in a seeming utopia, Denise and Greg Platt (Hathaway, all bangs and grit, and McGregor, wearing some of the shortest shorts you'll see) are a happy couple, with two kids (Sweet Tooth star Convery and Nashville's Stella) and a dog.

But under the surface, they hide their resentments from each other - Denise bashes away at a book in the basement at night while her husband delivers pizzas on top of his day job; and in the background, the two kids watch their silent squabbles with forlorn faces, full of fear of the possibility of divorce.

When a lightning storm knocks out all their power, the Platts find themselves ripped from suburbia and their entire neighborhood transported to someplace unknown. Things get worse when they go to find their errant dog Starbuck, only to discover their little corner is filled with dinosaurs waiting to get them.

As mentioned, the premise of The End of Oak Street works well.

It's in the smaller details that Mitchell creates a sense of horror and suspense in among the familiar romp which unfolds. Whether it's a flock of dinos picking at a fallen ginger cat or the Platts hiding from a dino stampede with a dead person in the front of their car they take solace in, Mitchell has an uncanny knack of making the everyday feel threatened - something he delivered to perfection in It Follows.

However, as the plot veers between escaping the dinos and slowing down to discuss what's next, the film finds a familiar rhythm that occasionally veers on repetitive, but somehow never manages to grate.

Whether it's a riff on the stalking Velociraptors from Jurassic Park in the shape of a slithering snake or Twilight Zone moments, The End of Oak Street has a way of sledgehammering through genres and turning the final result into something pleasantly watchable, but also simultaneously forgettable. (There's also one moment that genuinely does take your breath away, and feels daring for the genre.)

It may be that The End Of Oak Street is a suburban story that's padded out with too much drama and a lesbian sidestory, and one that could have stood to be more subversive in its Spielberg apeing, but as a romp through the dramas of family life, it's quite a doozy.