REVIEW: THE END OF OAK STREET
THE GIST
While the plot has some holes, it does a great job at capturing the spirit and essence of early Spielberg/Amblin productions.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Going in, I feared this might be Jurassic Park with driveways: a suburban street gets transported into the prehistoric past, dinosaurs appear and everyone discovers that the average family home was not designed with large predators in mind. The involvement of Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway suggested there might be more to it, while writer-director David Robert Mitchell—who previously made It Follows and Under the Silver Lake—gave me additional hope. I loved the oddness of Under the Silver Lake, even if I cannot remember much about It Follows. What Mitchell delivers is a warm, entertaining family adventure whose atmosphere and visual craft compensate for a screenplay that repeatedly raises interesting questions and then runs away from them.
The film’s greatest strength is the collision between the impossible and the completely ordinary. Mitchell reportedly began with the image of a dinosaur standing beside a suburban garage, and that remains the perfect expression of what works here. Garages, fences and family homes become tiny pockets of safety in a world that suddenly belongs to something much larger and hungrier. More importantly, the Platts already feel like a family under pressure before the cosmic event arrives. The dinosaurs therefore interrupt an existing domestic drama rather than replacing one. Mitchell understands that the old Amblin magic was never just bicycles, period cars and children looking amazed at special effects. It came from placing something fantastical beside recognisable family problems. Watching this, I felt transported back to being a kid with films like The Goonies and episodes of The Twilight Zone. A more impressionable version of me would probably have been obsessed with it.
The problem is that the film wants dinosaurs to be frightening without allowing them to behave too much like actual wild animals. Most of the attacks are strangely polite, with enormous predators chasing people around before being defeated by the ancient survival technique of closing a door and leaning against it. One unexpectedly vicious encounter briefly shows what the film could have been. It shocked me because it felt raw, consequential and completely out of step with the safer action surrounding it. The dark part of my brain immediately started wondering whether anybody was protected. Unfortunately, the film soon retreats from that possibility and uses its increasingly vague time-travel rules to soften the consequences. The characters also behave as though being transported millions of years into the past is merely a particularly stressful neighbourhood emergency. And how does nobody mention the smell? They are surrounded by unfamiliar vegetation, swamps, volcanic activity and what must be industrial quantities of dinosaur manure. To borrow from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, nobody has thought of the smell. Once this occurred to me, it became almost impossible to let it go.
Anne Hathaway does the most to stop these problems from overwhelming the film. This is not an especially weighty role, but she gives the family drama enough conviction to make the emotional danger feel real even when the science-fiction mechanics do not. Mitchell’s use of split-field diopter shots helps enormously. Do not worry—I am not going to go on about split diopters, although “Split Diopter” would make a great band name. The technique allows Hathaway to remain in sharp focus close to the camera while another character is also visible in focus behind her. That choice lets us study her reaction without losing sight of how the rest of the family is responding. A wide shot could provide the same basic information, but the close-up makes the moment more intimate. The image connects her private fear to the wider family crisis, which is exactly what the film is trying to do. Hathaway is the standout performer, not because anybody else is bad, but because she gives the spectacle an emotional centre.
I had a thoroughly entertaining time with The End of Oak Street as a 44-year-old man, although I suspect 12-year-old me would have ranked it considerably higher and then spent weeks thinking about dinosaurs appearing outside the house. Its characters make silly decisions, its prehistoric predators are surprisingly respectful of domestic architecture, and its wormhole explanation does not withstand much scrutiny. Yet the film has warmth, humour and a genuine sense of wonder. Sometimes its imagination is stronger than its logic, but sometimes that is enough.
Don’t think too hard. Just enjoy it.
