REVIEW: “The End Of Oak Street”
Courtesy of Warner Bros.
For a while, The End of Oak Street seems like director David Robert Mitchell has created something special. He has all the right pieces on the table: a family on the verge of falling apart, a cosmic mystery, prehistoric creatures, and that classic Amblin vibe that makes even the most outlandish stories feel real. Early on, it feels like he’s made a big, crowd-pleasing adventure that will leave people walking out of the theater smiling from ear to ear.
But as the movie goes on, it becomes clear that Mitchell never quite figures out how to pull all those pieces together. The movie isn’t a disaster, and it’s original enough that it’s never boring, with some fun scenes, clever ideas, and a few moments of real movie magic. Still, instead of capturing the spirit of the ’80s classics it wants to emulate, The End of Oak Street spends almost two hours looking for that special spark and never really finds it.
Mitchell, who returns to the director's chair seven years after his last movie (2019’s Under the Silver Lake), sets this story in 1982 and focuses on the Platt family. Greg (Ewan McGregor) and Denise (Anne Hathaway) live on the titular street in Michigan, trying to hold their troubled marriage together while raising their teenage daughter Audrey (Maisy Stella) and young son Brian (Christian Convery). One night, a strange cosmic event suddenly sends Oak Street and everyone on it back to the prehistoric era, making their everyday problems seem much less important.
Clearly drawing inspiration from the movies that Steven Spielberg made or produced through his Amblin Entertainment in the ‘80s, Mitchell doesn’t try to hide that influence, and to be fair, he’s not the first modern director to have borrowed from Spielberg over the years. The real issue is that The End of Oak Street rarely captures the sense of wonder or genuine emotion that made those classics last. So for most of the runtime, Mitchell’s movie feels like an expensively made, pale imitation of those classic movies.
That’s what makes the movie so frustrating. After 2015’s It Follows, Mitchell seemed like a director with a lot of talent. He knows how to create tense scenes and stage elaborate action sequences. In fact, you can feel the craft in those moments, and those parts make you wish the whole movie worked better. Where it falls short is the script, which feels like it needed a few more drafts, and Mitchell’s vision seems to have been pushed aside. There are obvious signs of reshoots and studio tinkering, with some scenes and story beats inserted so awkwardly that they don’t fit with the rest of the movie. Since the film was originally filmed back in 2024, it’s not hard to see why the final cut feels so overworked.
As for the dinosaurs themselves, while they look good, after so many Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies, simply putting a convincing dinosaur onscreen isn’t impressive anymore. The real challenge is making them interesting, and too often they get lost in the visual effects instead of feeling like real threats to the family. Still, Mitchell and his VFX crew deserve credit for depicting these dinosaurs more realistically than we’ve seen before, even adding feathers and fur. And also for finally bringing one of the more fearsome prehistoric creatures, the massive Titanoboa, to the big screen for the first time.
The cast fares a bit better. McGregor and Hathaway are always solid performers, and while their performances aren’t especially memorable here, they both fully commit to the material. That commitment helps sell the movie’s crazy premise and the increasingly ridiculous situations their characters face. They also do a good job showing the ups and downs of Greg and Denise’s strained marriage, making the audience care about them even when the script never digs deep enough. Stella and Convery are perfectly fine as the kids, but their characters are pretty thin and mostly seem like they’re there to fill out the typical “Spielberg” family.
The End of Oak Street isn't a bad movie, but it is a very frustrating one. It's competently made, occasionally fun and exciting, and has a great high-concept premise at its core. But for a movie about a regular neighborhood suddenly facing real dinosaurs, "competent" feels like a backhanded compliment. The movie should have embraced the strangeness, terror, and excitement of its premise for a wilder, more memorable ride. Instead, it feels like just another trip down a very familiar street.
The End Of Oak Street is currently playing in select theaters and is available to rent on VOD.