The End of Oak Street: A Review - A Delicious Dinosaur Disaster Tale
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****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****
My Popcorn Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
My Recommendation: SEE IT. A flawed but fun piece of summer entertainment with lots of delectable dinosaur action.
The End of Oak Street, written and directed by Robert David Mitchell, tells the story of a suburban family of four in middle America in 1982 who through some strange scientific anomalies have their entire neighborhood transformed into a pre-historic, dinosaur-filled, killing zone.
The film, which stars Anne Hathaway and Ewen McGregor as parents Denise and Greg Platt – and Maisy Stella and Christian Convery as their teenage daughter Audrey and son Brian, hit theatres last Friday – which is where I checked it out. The film has done moderately well at the box office – bringing in a $60 million haul over its first week.
The End of Oak Street is a delightful and delicious bit of summertime movie going that has a crisp ninety-nine-minute run time that never lags or leads you astray. The film is definitely flawed in terms of plot, but it is also a stylish homage to the Spielbergian ethos that drove popular filmmaking in the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s.
The familiar culture of suburban America (in this case Michigan), with the close-knit, mostly homogenous neighborhood and the seemingly perfect nuclear family as protagonists is right out of the Spielberg playbook. And so are the very apparent cracks in that seemingly perfect façade once you get a closer look.
Getting a closer look is something that writer/director David Robert Mitchell did with his previous film Under the Silver Lake (2018), which is a weird, wild and wonderful piece of work that speaks quite profoundly about not only conspiracy culture but the corruption and depravity of elites whose power and secrecy generate such a culture.
In The End of Oak Street Mitchell does something that seems more and more rare these days when it comes to Hollywood filmmaking…he actually seems to care.
That care takes the form of subtle but very effective and deft bits of directorial style that elevate otherwise mundane scenes into captivating pieces of visual drama. For example, there is an extended scene of simple dialogue between all four family members in their living room which in lesser hands would have been a throw away exposition scene. But Mitchell goes into his bag of tricks and pulls out the old split diopter to give those scenes some much needed visual flair – so much so that I leaned forward in my seat out of interest. (The split diopter is a device used to create dual areas of focus, one close to camera and one further away – with everything in between them blurry – Brian DePalma loves the split diopter as did many filmmakers in the 1970s)
A split diopter shot from the film “Carrie” - directed by Brian De Palma
Mitchell’s script is strong in some areas and weak in others. For instance, the plot of the film revolves around time portals that bring pre-historic dinosaurs to 1980’s America…but the way they ultimately try to resolve this plot point is pretty confusing and unsatisfying.
There are also some extraneous characters and storylines, like that of a bully and also a black girl who goes to private school, that do not propel the story forward or add much insight or interest.
The movie is helped though by the glorious Anne Hathaway absolutely devouring every scene she inhabits like the ravenous dinosaurs that hunt her character. Hathaway has been a busy lady this year with five feature films coming out this calendar year…and she’s also pregnant. Good for her. And good for her for buying in and bringing the goods in this film as the wanderlust wife who wants to break out of her confines but then those dastardly dinosaurs get in the way.
The rest of the cast are just fine. Both Maisy Stella and Christian Convery are okay as sort of annoying teenagers, and Ewen McGregor is decent enough as the rather soft and spineless husband who is trying to keep up appearances.
The real stars of The End of Oak Street are, of course, the dinosaurs. The End of Oak Street fits neatly into the classification of being a dinosaur film – the meaning of which is pretty straight forward…namely that it is a movie with dinosaurs in it. I love dinosaur movies…as does my young son. We will watch any piece of crap movie featuring dinos doing their dirty work…especially if it involves devouring dopey people.
Every year we rewatch the entire Jurassic Park/Jurassic World films. Some of them are good, most of them are mostly not-good…but we don’t care because they all have scenes of dinosaurs wreaking havoc and chewing people…and that’s good enough for us.
The End of Oak Street definitely fits near the top of the dinosaur movie pantheon. That’s not to say that it’s a great movie…it isn’t – although it isn’t bad either. But it does feature a plethora of delectable dinosaur kills set in suburban middle America during the Reagan revolution…and that makes it top-notch in my book.
The dinosaurs in this film are much more realistic than in the Jurassic Park/World franchise only because there is nothing awe-inspiring or noble about them, just fear-inducing. These dinos are all apex predators and humans are easy prey…and there are a lot of savage kills in this movie that proves that point.
The other interesting parts of The End of Oak Street are all more subtle and somewhat political or at least cultural. I won’t get into too many of them but the notion of Reagan’s revolution unleashing primordial powers (in Reagan’s case the powers of the “free market” which isn’t so free) upon the idyllic middle-class America of the 1980’s – and devouring it…as someone who has lived through all of that – including the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama/Trump/Biden/Trump sequels…is entirely spot on. (And this also recalls another very good genre film – Barbarian (2022) – which is also set in Michigan and which also uses the unleashing of the venal and vile Reagan revolution as a crucial but subtle plot point.)
Also spot on is the human reaction to those predatory powers…there is no coming together of people…no families or neighborhoods banding together to share resources, knowledge or man power to fight against his powerful enemy…no…in Reagan’s America for the last 46 years it is every man for himself and those who try to help others are nothing but fools and food for the hungry beasts.
The film is riddled with that kind of commentary if you have the eyes to see it and the will to look for it. I found that sub-text to be one of the most compelling parts of the film even though my son was oblivious to it all but still loved the movie because dinosaurs were kicking ass.
The bottom line regarding The End of Oak Street is that while the premise of the film is not perfectly sketched out, and it ultimately sort of falls apart when trying to reach a coherent conclusion, the film is completely compelling and entirely engaging.
This is not a great, Oscar-worthy, prestige film, but it is the type of film that is smart, perfect summer fun and is a throw-back to a better time when more of these kinds of films, if not these types of films, were made.
My recommendation is to go check out The End of Oak Street in the theatres, gobble down some popcorn and enjoy some solid dino-destruction while you still have the chance.
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