THE END OF OAK STREET Review

If there's one thing about me, it's that I will be watching a dinosaur movie. Add Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor alongside exciting young talent like Maisy Stella and Christian Convery? Yeah, The End of Oak Street was basically formulated in a lab to be one of my most anticipated films of the year. Living up to that anticipation is a different beast entirely but, thankfully, David Robert Mitchell delivers a suspenseful summer flick that keeps you entertained so long as you don't think too hard about how dinosaurs made their way to the suburbs.

The End of Oak Street follows the Platt family, made up of Denise (Hathaway), Greg (McGregor), Audrey (Stella) and Brian (Convery). They're the perfect early '80s family on the surface, but each one of them is harboring a secret that threatens to rip them apart. Those secrets are given the opportunity to simmer on the back burner once the family wakes up to find dinosaurs ravaging their suburban neighborhood, forcing the Platts to band together and survive above all else.

If I can offer one tidbit of advice heading into the film, it's that you should know that it's essential for your viewing experience that you don't think too hard about The End of Oak Street's logic. If you're not the type of person who can turn that part of your brain off, you're probably going to have a bad time. As far as I'm concerned, I don't mind that your rules are stupid so long as you don't establish them and then break them. For better or worse, this flick is fully committed to its messy theoretical physics.

And why shouldn't it be? There are dinosaurs roaming the suburbs, snackin' on neighbors!

For decades, no one has been able to compete with Jurassic Park as a dinosaur film. You can take a deep, calming breath — I'm not about to tell you that The End of Oak Street does. At least not holistically. There is exactly one area that Oak Street can hold its own against the great: the dinosaurs.

Yeah, sure, Jurassic Park is still winning that fight — especially if you look at the effects overall rather than just that of the dinosaurs — but what shame is there in losing to the best film of all time? The End of Oak Street takes the more historically accurate dinosaur approach, making its raptors smaller and feather-clad while other species find themselves covered in fur. There are a ton of textures at play, all of which add a nice depth to the visuals throughout the dinosaur-heavy adventure. We also see an exciting array of species beyond the straight-laced "these are the herbivores and these are the carnivores" exploration. Everything from tortoise to giant sea slugs stomp and slither their way through the film. They're alongside some exciting flora, too.

Thanks to the aforementioned texture, Mitchell's film always feels lived in. The creatures have bumps and scars, the wardrobe feels appropriately crisp on Denise while Gary and the kids all look a little more worn, and the neighborhood is given the opportunity to feel alive before the chaos and death unfolds.

That may make it sound like The End of Oak Street is a very serious film doing very serious dinosaur business. It isn't. There is a scene with McGregor's Gary that is (perhaps unintentionally) so funny that I continued to laugh about it the whole ride home. Still, Oak Street also manages to be heartfelt and thoughtful. Mitchell made it as tribute to his late father, and the sentimentality of that is evident from start to finish.

While Denise and Gary's story is a little stereotypical — she's a bit of a shrew, he's a bit of a hapless idiot, and they're both just doing their best — Hathaway and McGregor have lovely chemistry. There's back seat scene that ends up being way hotter than it has any right to be, if only because if they weren't in a living nightmare they absolutely would have banged in that moment. Hathaway, for her part, is acting her pants off from credits to credits. Her frustration spans both the mundane and the fantastic, and her terror and rage are palpable as she fights to keep her family alive.

That terror laces itself together nicely with the film's suspense. Mitchell has always excelled at quiet, lingering terror, and The End of Oak Street is no exception. There are plenty of big moments, of course, but the director has made a name for himself by making us constantly concerned about what's around the corner. If being scared stresses you out, bring a buddy who doesn't mind you squeezing their hand. You will be tense!

That tension serves an at once thoughtful and silly script that pays homage to Mitchell's late father and the dinosaur films that they watched together. I suspect a some people will be frustrated by the director's perceived shift into more popular culture, but The End of Oak Street is most certainly the most accessible of his films. Its logic is nonsense, sure, but it's a nice, entertaining summer flick that is made for a weekend at the movies with friends and family.

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