Movie Review: The End of Oak Street

I was only 14-years-old when the original Jurassic Park came out and I can still remember being completely blown away by it. While the movie was mainly a thriller, and could arguably even be categorized as horror, he and his screenwriters David Koepp and Michael Crichton (whose novel the movie was based on) understood that seeing dinosaurs in person would be just as awe-inspiring for the characters as it was for the audience seeing them rendered so well on screen, letting both them and us soak that in before leaning into the terror that would follow. But once the chaos ramped up they didn’t hold back, with dinos chasing, chewing, and stomping characters in thrilling fashion, to the point that I recall actually having nightmares about velociraptors breaking into my bedroom. No other movie, including JP‘s own sequels, has been able to make these creatures quite that scary since. At least until now.

David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street largely eschews the desire to wow us with its creatures, after all, for most of us seeing dinosaurs on screen isn’t anything new. Instead, after spending a little time introducing us to the Platt family—Dad Greg (Ewan McGregor), Mom Denise (Anne Hathaway), daughter Audrey (Maisy Stella), and younger brother Brian (Christian Convery)—and giving us a general sense of their neighborhood, he fairly quickly launches into the terror.

The family seems outwardly happy to their neighbors, but Greg and Denise’s marriage is beginning to strain, with even the kids sensing that divorce could be a possibility. A few odd occurrences in nearby yards foreshadow the entire neighborhood waking up one morning to discover that their part of town has inexplicably been moved hundreds of millions of years back in time. Without electricity, phones, or running water, the Platts realize that their ongoing survival is going to be difficult. The presence of carnivorous dinosaurs roaming the streets make their odds significantly worse.

While Jurassic Park was interested in being “about” something on top of offering up thrills, The End of Oak Street is pretty unconcerned with delivering any sort of message, instead being more than happy to simply scare the audience at every turn. Superimposing copious quantities of dinosaur carnage onto a quintessentially safe idyll of 80’s suburbia and reminding us that danger could be lurking anywhere, Mitchell keeps viewers jumping in their seats throughout much of the movie’s fleet and efficient 99-minute runtime. Yes, characters do sometimes make pretty boneheaded decisions for no better reason than queuing up the next action set piece, but with masterful staging and camera work by Mitchell and DP Mike Gioulakis, and a cast that fully commit to every moment, those scenes work so well that it’s hard to care all that much.

I don’t think this is the sort of script that would benefit from having its internal logic analyzed all that deeply, but I also don’t think anyone walked into this expecting that it would. The marketing promised us dinosaur mayhem and the movie delivers. Proving to be scarier and more unpredictable than I would have thought (one moment seriously had me wide-eyed and agape in shock), Oak Street leans into the horror of the premise much more than its predecessors ever did. It’s a wild ride that manages to be simultaneously fun and vicious and that should keep all but the most jaded among us entertained, and could even inspire a good many nightmares. ★★★★½