NOW IN THEATERS! It’s not quite Jurassic Park, but David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street quickly becomes a Twilight Zone episode for a family led by Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor…just without any commentary on humanity.
Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor) are a married couple on Oak Street, and their marriage has been on the rocks for quite some time. Denise desires to be a writer and sneaks into the basement to type. Greg is picking up extra hours delivering pizzas. Their kids, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery), are stuck watching them argue, with Brian wishing they’d just divorce. It’s an ordinary day on the block until it isn’t, when a strange light transports a two-mile radius of their neighborhood back to the Jurassic period.
When the neighborhood lands in the past, the Platts quickly learn they’re not alone. Dinosaurs are roaming the new landscape, and they’re hunting anything and everything that moves, even their insufferable neighbors. Denise and Greg now have to set aside their problems—fast—to protect Audrey and Brian and hopefully find a way to get back to their own time.
“It’s an ordinary day on the block until it isn’t, when a strange light transports a two-mile radius of their neighborhood back to the Jurassic period.”
As the attacks keep coming and the strange terrain throws new dangers at them, Oak Street is now a fight for survival, with prehistoric predators closing in and no clear path back to the world the Platts left behind.
The End of Oak Street is all sizzle and no steak. It’s a wild roller-coaster ride that leaves you exhausted by the end with very little to show for the quick 90-minute trip you were just on. Look, for the cost of a full-price movie ticket, I want movies to at least attempt to say something. Jurassic Park at least pondered the notion of whether man should play God. Here, it’s just a family survival story with a typical ’80s family conflict as the “heart” of the tale.
What really pisses me off about The End of Oak Street is the ending. As a fan of science fiction, I find it illogical and awful. If you like the ending, then you need to burn anything in your home that is related to Back to the Future. It’s an ending that just screams [the director] thinks we’re sheep and won’t have questions by the end. That, or he’s just lazy.
The action is fine, but unless you’re a fan of massive plot holes, best to skip this one or wait for it to come to streaming.
"…What really pisses me off…is the ending"
