The End of Oak Street Review: Dinosaur Chaos Meets Family Drama

The End of Oak Street follows the Platt family after a mysterious cosmic event suddenly rips their suburban neighborhood from the world they know and transports it someplace unknown. With their surroundings transformed and no clear way home, the family must stick together to survive while trying to understand exactly what happened to Oak Street.

The Good

First and foremost, Anne Hathaway is a force in this movie. This woman has been giving great performances back to back, and that does not stop here. She is the center of the film for the most part and definitely a scene stealer. Once Denise gets that rifle in her hands, she is no joke. Hathaway brings a ton of energy to the role and does an excellent job balancing the character’s vulnerability with the intensity required once things go completely off the rails.

Ewan McGregor is really good as well. I don’t want to get into spoilers regarding his character, but I liked the role he played within the family and thought he and Hathaway worked extremely well together. The chemistry between the Platts is important because the movie spends a lot of time with this family, even when I didn’t necessarily agree with how some of that material was written.

When The End of Oak Street gets to the action, that’s where I had a lot of fun. The dinosaurs are obviously not a spoiler because they’re all over the trailers, and I liked that David Robert Mitchell didn’t pull many punches with them. The violence gets as gory as it needs to without becoming excessive, and these creatures actually feel dangerous.

More importantly, the movie maintains the threat. This isn’t the type of dinosaur adventure where I stopped worrying about whether these people were actually going to get hurt. When someone goes outside, there’s a legitimate sense that something bad could happen. That danger helped keep me invested even when other parts of the story weren’t working.

The mystery surrounding what happened to Oak Street also kept me interested. Why did this happen? How did it happen? Where exactly are they? That’s where the movie starts leaning much harder into its science fiction elements. I’ll be honest, once we get some answers, I’m not convinced all of it makes a lot of sense. I also didn’t care. The explanation was simple enough for me to say, “Okay, that’s why all this crazy stuff is happening,” and move on. I didn’t need a physics teacher to show up and give me a 20-minute lecture.

There are also some genuinely shocking moments that I won’t spoil here. One particular sequence had my entire theater shook. I remember sitting there thinking, “Oh, we’re really doing this?” It immediately established that the movie was willing to go places I wasn’t expecting, and those surprises gave the story some much-needed unpredictability.

The Bad

Unfortunately, I didn’t love every visual choice in the movie. There are several shots where the camera focuses heavily on the side of someone’s face while another character is talking. I understand what Mitchell and cinematographer Michael Gioulakis were going for, especially since the production intentionally used techniques such as zooms and split diopters to create a more stylized look. Sometimes it works. Other times, I’m sitting there wondering why I’m staring at somebody’s ear instead of the person who’s actually talking. It became distracting.

My biggest issue, however, is the writing. There are some excellent surprises, but a lot of the movie is incredibly predictable. Too many developments are telegraphed well in advance, which became frustrating because the premise itself is so creative. The movie spends all this energy trying to be different, only to fall back on some very familiar and formulaic storytelling decisions.

Even worse were some of the characters and the decisions they made. This is where the movie really started getting on my nerves.

We cannot be trapped in a place we can’t escape with gigantic dinosaurs running around outside, and you’re sitting here wanting to talk about family drama and marital issues. I understand that the goal is to examine the human condition and use this extraordinary situation to force the Platts to confront their problems. In fact, Mitchell specifically describes the family as having secrets and personal struggles that the danger forces them to confront. I understand the intention. The execution is where I had the problem.

There were moments when the sense of urgency simply didn’t match the situation. If there’s a dinosaur right outside the window, maybe now isn’t the time to unpack something that happened in your marriage. Can we first talk about how we’re going to survive? Can somebody establish some ground rules about not going outside? Maybe we can handle the family therapy after we’ve figured out how not to get eaten.

That’s the type of writing that takes me completely out of a movie. Characters don’t have to make perfect decisions, especially when they’re terrified. However, their actions still need to respect the gravity of what’s happening around them. Too often, The End of Oak Street sacrifices that urgency to manufacture drama.

The Verdict

The End of Oak Street is a fun mixed bag of dinosaur chaos and family drama that delivers genuine thrills, but frustrating characters and predictable writing keep its wild premise from reaching its full potential.

This isn’t simply Jurassic Park in the suburbs, and I appreciated that. David Robert Mitchell offers something more original while keeping enough familiar ingredients to make the movie accessible. There’s comedy, drama, science fiction, action, violence, some horror, and, of course, a whole lot of dinosaurs.

Anne Hathaway is easily one of the biggest reasons to watch. She continues to have an incredible year, and this performance gives her another opportunity to show just how much range she has. Ewan McGregor is strong alongside her, the action works, and when the movie wants those dinosaurs to feel dangerous, it succeeds.

Unfortunately, the writing kept pulling me out of the experience. The movie has an imaginative premise and a few moments that genuinely caught me off guard, but those strengths are surrounded by predictable developments and characters making decisions that had me questioning what they were thinking. It’s worth the watch during a matinee or stream-at-home experience.

The End of Oak Street Trailer