Anyone who knows me knows that I was and still am a dinosaur kid to my core. With each passing Jurassic World movie I find myself on more and more of an island liking each movie as much as I do. We don't get a Jurassic flick this year, but It Follows director David Robert Mitchell is here to fill the tyrannosaurus hole in our hearts with The End of Oak Street. We've also got another dinosaur movie released the same time in Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie but I've been told I can't just go see that one by myself.
The End of Oak Street follows a suburban family in the early 1980s. Parents Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor) are working through a rough patch in their relationship, one stressing on their two children, Brian (Christian Convery) and Audrey (Maisy Stella). Their seemingly normal neighbourhood begins experiencing strange anomalies, whether they be unexplained foliage showing up in backyards or bring flashing lights in the middle of the night. One night, a storm brings the strangest change yet, transporting their neighbourhood from the middle of suburban Michigan to the Mesozoic era, where whatever issues they face at home are dwarfed by their new obstacle: dinosaurs.
I knew going into this one that I'd have a good time. It's a director I trust making a dinosaur movie with a tone that felt like 80s sci-fi classics, with a throwback aesthetic that I love. What I wasn't prepared for was just how wild this one gets, especially when it comes to the film's sense of humour. There is a lot of the Amblin-esque fun you would expect, but there's a darkly comedic side to the film that had me genuinely gasping at multiple points. The blend of action/adventure, dark comedy, and sci-fi horror all leads to something that feels somehow both familiar and unique in equal measures, and a ride that is consistently fun from start to finish.
We've seen other films in the past put dinosaurs into modern settings, but the way they roam these suburban streets might be the best we've seen. When they are first introduced into the story there's a lot of barely glimpsing bits and pieces of them before we go full tilt into the action, and that allows us to see a bit of how they might adapt to this new setting. By shadowing them behind fences, trees, and sheds, Robert Mitchell steadily builds the tension and it works wonders in hooking you in as a viewer. Once we do get to the full dinosaur action, I was pleasantly surprised with just how good they look. This is by no means a small budget movie, but compared to similar films it cost a pretty reasonable amount especially when you consider how strong the CGI is throughout.
As great as all the dinosaur action is, this movie doesn't work without you caring about the family at the heart of it. Hathaway and McGregor are both great here, delivering a believable depiction of a struggling couple thrown into an unimaginable circumstance. McGregor in particular is consistently hilarious, while Hathaway has an intensely protective attitude that just rocks. I also loved Stella and Convery as the kids. They never outshine their on screen parents, but both deliver fun performances that make you root for them even when their characters make some pretty foolish mistakes. There are a handful of other small characters, but really it's the family of four (plus their dog) that we follow, and each of them do great work here.
Narratively this is a pretty unhinged movie, and some of Robert Mitchell's filmmaking choices echo the craziness. The musical score kind of feels like a bootleg John Williams effort (in a good way), but the cinematography echoes more of an M. Night Shyamalan kind of style. Split diopter shots are used frequently, and while some of them feel a bit strange, their use gives the film's more intimate moments a uniqueness that I really appreciated. There are also moments where the editing is a lot of fun, allowing the filmmaking on the whole to parrallel the film's tone really well.
All in all, I loved this. I'm sure people will come in and poke holes in it, and admittedly it is a very goofy premise, but I don't think that matters. This is a fun summer blockbuster that blends several different tones to deliver a wild ride that I can't wait to experience again. 4.5/5
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