The End of Oak Street

David Robert Mitchell, whose previous directing credits include It Follows and Under the Silver Lake, has this summer turned away from his indie roots after eight years to bring audiences the latest popcorn blockbuster. In the form of The End of Oak Street, Mitchell presents Jurassic Park: Suburbia.

Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor) appear to be living the perfect 1980s nuclear family life with their two children Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery), but under the surface there are cracks in the family dynamic. One night, a mysterious cosmic event transports the family and their neighbourhood back in time, so far back in fact that terrifying prehistoric dinosaurs now patrol the streets and hunt for blood. With no chance of salvation seemingly in sight, the family must stick together to search for answers and survive in the new world they have woken up in.

A dinosaur apocalypse is undeniably an amusing concept, albeit one that has been explored to death by the Jurassic Park franchise. It offers scope for adventure and mystery while also allowing for some fun and games along the way. The End of Oak Street brilliantly builds up the tension as the perfect world in which the Platt family live begins to change. The film takes its time to reveal to the audience what is truly going on, instead dropping entertaining titbits for them to nibble on, including an exotic plant sprouting in the garden and a large pile of manure appearing on the neighbour’s lawn. Something is going wrong, but it is not quite clear what it is, keeping viewers on their toes.

Once the grand dinosaur reveal happens, the audience is bombarded with an army of creatures and endless terrible decision-making from the main characters as they continuously venture across town attempting to avoid being spotted by a monster that wants to eat them. Hathaway is by far and away the best performance in this movie, proving to be a formidable heroine as she leads her family armed with a shotgun. The other members play their part in moving the story forward, but there are several issues that ultimately let them down.

Front and centre is the fact that the feature doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. There are multiple themes running through its core, from family relations to parental sacrifice, but while being an action-adventure picture, it pitches itself as a horror and a comedy also. Because of this, viewers begin to feel a disconnect to the characters, and while the moment of greatest jeopardy comes as a shock, the audience doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. There is also one interaction with a bully that ends up making no sense or relevance to the plot. Was that left in the final edit by mistake?

However, despite the writing, the world that is created on screen is wonderful to behold. Fitting with the 1980s setting, Mike Gioulakis implements split-diopter shots, a style that was massive in the blockbuster era of cinema, and composer Michael Giacchino creates a sweeping joy of a score, resembling those that the great John Williams would write for Steven Spielberg. For those looking to be swept away to another world for 90 minutes, these tenets of The End of Oak Street will do just that.

Guy Lambert

The End of Oak Street is released nationwide on 14^th August 2026.

Watch the trailer for The End of Oak Street here: