The End of Oak Street isn't the typical dinosaur movie you might expect from its trailer. At first, it looks like another action-adventure trying, in some way, to follow Jurassic Park or Jurassic World, just on a smaller scale. Instead of simply watching another dinosaur movie, we get a cinematic experience that takes us somewhere completely different. Just like the characters themselves, we are transported back in time, not millions of years, but 40 years, to the cinema of the 80s.
What hits first is the look of the film. The grain, the cinematography and the way the whole thing is presented don't make it feel like something shot today. It brings to mind the movies many of us used to watch at home years ago, especially The Twilight Zone or those lower-budget B-movies. Then you have the production design and, most importantly, the choice of songs. The music immediately brings back that atmosphere of the decade. That summer breeze of the 80s, walking down the street with a Walkman on your ears, feeling the heat of the day and just being excited about what is around you. The film somehow brings that feeling back.
There is also something about the structure of the film that brings to mind The Twilight Zone. It builds a mystery, gets you curious about what is happening, intensifies the situation and then moves relatively quickly towards its conclusion. That simplicity actually works in the film's favour because it never feels unnecessarily stretched. There is a curiosity about what happened, why it happened and how all of this was possible, but the film doesn't really give us many deeper answers. It leaves us wanting more, but this also isn't the kind of movie that asks you to analyse every ingredient. Sometimes you just want to eat the popcorn. And The End of Oak Street feels like exactly that kind of 80s popcorn cinema. Simple, entertaining and something you can enjoy without thinking too much about what is inside.
The dinosaurs here feel much closer to the shark in Jaws than what we are used to seeing in Jurassic Park. There is no sense of wonder or fascination before everything suddenly turns dangerous. Here, the threat is there almost from the beginning. The mystery quickly turns into jumpscares and a fight for survival. This family suddenly finds itself in a completely hostile world, totally unprepared for what is around them, and the film makes you think about how unprepared most of us would probably be in the same situation.
It is easy to sit in the cinema and judge the characters for the decisions they make. But we are not in their shoes. Would we really be able to rationalise everything and make better decisions with our survival on the line, or would we react emotionally and make exactly the same mistakes? Once the film puts its characters in that situation, the action becomes quite intense and it rarely slows down. It keeps moving and doesn't give you much time to stop and wonder what comes next.
Ewan McGregor probably makes the biggest impression out of the family. Seeing him step away from the Obi-Wan image that has followed him so strongly in recent years makes it easier to see the ordinary father he is playing rather than the actor himself. With Anne Hathaway, the effect is almost the opposite. With her appearing in so many recent productions, at times it feels more like watching Anne Hathaway than the mother she is supposed to be playing. A similar problem affects the children, whose characters never feel developed enough to form a strong connection with the audience.
Maybe that comes back to the simplicity of the screenplay and how little time the film gives us to actually connect with this family. Strangely, the connection with them feels like something the audience has to create for itself, rather than something the film naturally builds. We want to participate in their journey and feel like part of the experience instead of simply watching it from the outside.
Knowing that David Robert Mitchell deliberately wanted to pay tribute to the cinema of the 80s makes some of his choices easier to appreciate. It feels like his own attempt to bring an episode of The Twilight Zone to the big screen, mixing it with a little of that Spielberg and Jaws influence, survival horror, adventure and the popcorn jumpscares of that decade. If this is exactly the movie Mitchell wanted to make, then he succeeded.
But every choice comes with a consequence. By making such a specific kind of film, Mitchell also limits what The End of Oak Street can be. Make it deeper, develop the characters more or explain the mystery further and perhaps you create a better screenplay, but you might also lose the simplicity that makes this film what it is. Its flaws feel less like something that was simply unfinished and more like a consequence of the kind of movie Mitchell chose to make.
The End of Oak Street also shows another side of him as a filmmaker. Under the Silver Lake was a much more psychedelic experience, while It Follows operated much more directly as horror. Here he mixes survival horror with adventure and family drama, further showing his range as a director. The result won't necessarily work for everyone, especially if you go in expecting a very different dinosaur movie.
Maybe that is what feels so special about the cinema of the 80s. There was a certain freedom and lightness to those movies. That feeling of, "We are here to entertain you. We don't need to reinvent cinema." You could put a VHS into the player, sit down and for the next two hours nothing else existed. You weren't analysing the structure or thinking about what the movie could have done differently. You were simply watching it and enjoying what was happening on the screen.
And somewhere during The End of Oak Street, the need to analyse the film disappears and we become just viewers again. We stop thinking about what the film could have done differently and simply enjoy the experience. The End of Oak Street isn't a perfect movie, but it is the kind of cinematic experience we don't get very often anymore. For the emotions and nostalgia it brings back, and the way it captures the spirit of the cinema of the 80s, it earns an 8/10.