It's been 33 years since the enduring cinematic masterpiece that is Jurassic Park first hit theaters in June 1993. Since that fateful summer, Steven Spielberg's sci-fi survival thriller has reigned supreme as the undisputed king of dinosaur films. Now, The End of Oak Street is proving a dino blockbuster that serves up prehistoric horror with a side of genuine pathos is still a worthy endeavor.
Based on Michael Crichton's 1990 novel, Jurassic Park not only delivered some of the most memorable creature-feature scares in movie history, it was also a sharp cautionary tale about scientific hubris and the illusion of man's control over nature that was anchored by stellar performances from its core cast. But over the course of numerous sequels and reboots, the franchise largely shifted away from resonant character drama in favor of high-octane action sequences and increasingly monstrous beasts. Outside the Jurassic universe, there haven't been many successful attempts to reinvent the dinosaur wheel, so to speak.
Cue the release of The End of Oak Street, now in theaters. Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell (It Follows, Under the Silver Lake) and produced by J.J. Abrams (Cloverfield, Super 8), Oak Street follows the Platt family—husband and wife Greg (Ewan McGregor) and Denise (Anne Hathaway), their two children Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery), and their rambunctious dog Starbuck (played by two different pups named Brisket and Buzz)—after a mysterious cosmic event transports their 1980s suburban Michigan neighborhood back to a primitive era. What follows is a brutal fight for survival against aggressive, hungry, and carnivorous dinosaurs who quickly turn the community's previously idyllic streets into their own personal feeding ground. There's an absurd scientific explanation for these events, but the movie doesn't spend too much time on it, which is mostly for the best within the bounds of its sub-100-minute run. Instead, The End of Oak Street is a thriller about suburban unease and domestic tension, with a primeval twist.
"I’m just calling back that feeling I had as a kid, where I could be in the yard looking over to the dead-end street nearby, looking down into the woods," Mitchell told the AU Review of what inspired Oak Street's vintage vibe. "There was this old brick or rock wall, and it was just imagining what’s in the shadows, you know? What’s beyond the chain-link fence? As a kid, just thinking about the films that I had seen, the stories I’d read, and imagining those things in my own suburban world, and then as an adult trying to remember that feeling. I do think it’s a little bit burned into my brain, that feeling."
The Platts and their neighbors must contend with a relentless pack of Velociraptors, a roving Allosaurus, and a behemoth of a snake that gets its jollies from sneaking up on its prey, among other predators. But Oak Street doesn't just spotlight the perils of man-eating dinosaurs. It also delves in the simmering marital friction that's threatening to tear the Platts apart from the inside.
While Greg is struggling to hold down a consistent job and drinking to cope with the anxiety surrounding that strain, Denise is channeling her domestic frustration into writing a secret novel about a housewife who leaves her family behind for a new life in New York City. "She’s the kind of woman who grew up in a time when many women went from their father’s home to their husband’s," Hathaway told Time Out of her character's mindset. "I wanted Denise to seem like the last person in the world you’d expect to be able to take on a Titanoboa with a knife."
After being catapulted hundreds of millions of years into the past, Greg and Denise are forced to simultaneously reckon with both the dangerous realities of being dropped in the center of a primordial jungle and the hidden truths fracturing their relationship. Of course, the rampaging dinosaurs are a bit more of an immediate issue. And Mitchell doesn't waste any time making the life-or-death stakes of the Platts' predicament abundantly clear. Those going into Oak Street blind should be prepared for a few gasp-inducing surprises.
Once the carnage gets going, Mitchell never really take his foot off the gas. And while the film's ending ultimately requires some logic-bending buy-in, the journey to get there is equal parts thrilling, fun, emotional, and ferocious. Harking back to its Jurassic forbear, The End of Oak Street channels everyone's favorite '80s Amblin classics, but with a far more vicious bite.
