Director: David Robert Mitchell
Writers: David Robert Mitchell
Stars: Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella, Christian Convery
Synopsis: The Platt family bands together to navigate their new surroundings after a cosmic event transports their suburban neighborhood to someplace unknown.
Let’s call it what it is: The End of Oak Street is a big, dumb, and fun summer movie. That’s not a bad thing. The new science-fiction adventure film is epic in ambition but small in scale. Instead of the end of the world or a simple monster-in-a-house picture, you have beasts running loose in a cul-de-sac. What follows is a community ravaged by what could only be described as something out of Dr. Alan Grant’s feathered-lizard nightmares.
If you put too much thought into The End of Oak Street, it will ruin the experience. It’s one of those films where the characters make bafflingly terrible decisions, the kind where walking back through a neighborhood full of monsters somehow seems like a better choice than staying in a house that isn’t flooding, burning, falling apart, out of food or water, or, you know, surrounded by bloodthirsty Cretaceous creatures.
Or, the plot comes up with a brief moment of exposition that, of course, explains everything, allowing you to put your brain back on cruise control. Still, the premise of The End of Oak Street is different and, for that matter, the kind of simple, vintage monster picture Hollywood refuses to make anymore unless it has a connection to an intellectual property with the fingerprints of Stan Lee, Harry Donenfeld, or Jack Liebowitz.
The story begins in 1982, where Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg Platt (Ewan McGregor) are celebrating the annual neighborhood block party. The couple is putting on a brave face for their teenage children. Their oldest, Audrey (Maisy Stella of My Old Ass fame), is smart and has been accepted into Cornell, but the family cannot afford the tuition. Their youngest, Brian (Sweet Tooth’s Christian Convery), is being bullied by some older neighborhood kids.
Denise is fed up with Greg’s drinking and the fact that he works too much. In her spare time, she writes a book in which the main character fantasizes about leaving her family behind to pursue a career in New York. Hey, write what you know, right? The kids are aware of the friction between them. So much so that even their dog, Starbuck (played by Australian Cattle Dogs Brisket and Buzz in their acting debuts), probably takes notice.
I mean, why else would Starbuck keep getting into the yard of their neighbor, Mel (Coyote vs. Acme’s Mel Jacobs), and terrorizing his backyard? He’s acting out, of course. That sets the stage for what’s about to take place on Oak Street, where a strange, flashing green light briefly fills the sky, causing a power outage and leaving the Platts and their neighbors as a new source of protein for a bunch of bloodthirsty dinosaurs, with no idea how they got there.
The End of Oak Street is from David Robert Mitchell, who made the cult classics It Follows and Under the Silver Lake. Mitchell also wrote the script, which could be described as Spielberg-lite or J.J. Abrams-esque, with Abrams producing the film. The difference is that those filmmakers usually give their stories an emotional spine strong enough to hold together all that prehistoric mayhem.
That alone would have made the action and scares feel more personal. The film has that, along with a clever little twist at the end that, if you think about it, may be one of the more selfish character choices in cinema history. Still, there’s something about running for your life amid great special effects, pulsating tension, and armrest-grabbing scares that deliver just enough thrills and chills to escape the summer heat.
There’s also only one real bit of product placement, a cereal, which I bring up because it never pulls you out of the movie. And since the film is set in the year E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial became a phenomenon, and Michael Jackson’s Thriller took the world by storm, I tip my hat to the corporate studio mastermind who made the call to name the dog after the world’s most popular coffee brand.
For me, going into The End of Oak Street with reasonable expectations is key, especially in a summer that gave us Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and Olivia Wilde’s The Invite. Those experiences aim to feed the soul. Mitchell’s film is designed to cleanse the cinematic palate with a big, visceral creature feature that asks you to do nothing more than sit back, turn your knuckles white from gripping the armrest, and enjoy the ride.
You can watch The End of Oak Street exclusively in theaters August 14th!
