PLOT: An entire suburban neighbourhood is transported into a prehistoric world, with one fractured family forced to band together if they hope to survive their new reality.
REVIEW: The End of Oak Street is a late-summer surprise from Warner Bros. Despite an unusually quiet marketing campaign that seems to suggest this could pass under the radar, it’s one of the most purely entertaining Hollywood sci-fi movies to come out in years, anchored by terrific performances, excellent CGI, and a propulsive sense of pace so tight the film runs a lean and mean 100 minutes, without an ounce of fat on the bone.
It’s a strong return to form for director David Robert Mitchell, who had a major hit with It Follows but then struck out with his indulgent follow-up, Under the Silver Lake (although it’s been steadily building a cult following). It’s a change of pace, adopting the ersatz Amblin Entertainment style favoured by the movie’s producer, J.J. Abrams. It has the same vibe as his own Super 8, while also having a lot in common with the Spielberg-produced Amblin flicks Poltergeist and Arachnophobia (it’s even set in 1982 — the year Poltergeist and E.T. hit theaters).
While it would be only natural to be sick of dinosaurs on the big screen in the wake of too many Jurassic World films, Mitchell’s film does something unique — it makes them feel truly dangerous again. Pushing its PG-13 rating, once the Platt family finds themselves in a world occupied by dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures, they watch their neighbours being picked off in gruesome ways by the carnivorous beasts. This is probably what reminded me the most of Amblin films, in that they weren’t afraid to push the limits of how scary a family film could be while still working for a broad audience.
It helps that Mitchell’s assembled an exceptional cast for the family at the film’s center. Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor are the family’s parents, with Denise a stay-at-home mom frustrated by her hubby’s inability to hold a job and their routine life. She sneaks away at night to write a book about a woman who abandons her family, not that she’d ever communicate her ambitions. While spiky in that way, you never doubt Hathaway’s character loves her family, and the scenes where she desperately fights off dinos to save her kids have an edge to them that makes the carnage more believable than in larger-scale blockbusters.
Likewise, McGregor is at his best as Greg, the upbeat, always-positive, salt-of-the-earth dad who delivers pizzas to make ends meet without complaint (even if this embarrasses his wife) and seems to connect with the kids more effortlessly than Denise does, even as their marriage becomes increasingly frayed. Watching McGregor and Hathaway gradually reconnect in the midst of all the chaos is probably the movie’s greatest strength, with their relationship being something you root for.
The kids are great too, with My Old Ass star Maisy Stella soulful as the Carl Sagan-loving brainiac daughter, who’s gradually awakening to a truth about herself that was somewhat more taboo forty-four years ago than it is now. The same goes for Sweet Tooth star Christian Convery as the family’s son, who is starting to rebel against his passive dad and whose increasingly short fuse is starting to get him in trouble in his neighbourhood. The family feels real, with no one too idealized and everyone having their moments of doubt, making them all the easier to identify with. There’s also an adorable dog, Starbuck, roaming around, with him having some crowd-pleasing moments the audience ate up at the packed screening I attended.
Despite a lower budget than usual for a movie of this scale, the VFX are flawless, with the dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures beautifully rendered. The action is lower-key than in one of the Jurassic World movies, with this being more like Jaws in how it treats its creatures (less really is more). The score by Michael Giacchino is very much in the mold of John Williams or — more accurately for the period — Jerry Goldsmith or Alan Silvestri, and is one of his finest.
Truth be told, I was stunned by how much I enjoyed The End of Oak Street. It was an almost perfect film, with its only flaw being a two-minute coda at the very end that went a little overboard and should have been deleted (the movie has a logical endpoint immediately prior that would have ended it on a magnificent note). But that’s a small quibble for one of the most purely enjoyable films of the year, and one that’s begging to be seen in theatres. It’s the best dinosaur movie since the original Jurassic Park.
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