The End of Oak Street Movie Review:
It’s not often that a whimsical premise is treated with the emotional depth it deserves. The End of Oak Street revolves around a quaint suburban family and their struggle to survive after their entire neighborhood is shifted to the same spot that existed 200 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. With such a premise, it is easy to make a campy adventure like Jumanji or anything-with-Dwayne-The Rock-Johnson-in-it. But thankfully, The End of Oak Street takes a refreshing route, which is ironic given how the film is reminiscent of family adventure films of the 80s and 90s, especially those made by Steven Spielberg or Robert Zemeckis.
Director: David Robert Mitchell
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella, Christian Convery
It is not just the 80s setting; the family dynamics and the scene blocking also remind you of early Spielberg and Zemeckis. There are some incredible scene compositions in the film. When the scene has to cut away from Denise (Anne Hathaway) to her son and his friends, the camera shows them walking away in the background before cutting to their conversation. When the family first encounters the dinosaurs, we see only brief glimpses of the giant reptiles. A tail here, a talon there, and then the big reveal, the momentum reminiscent of Jaws. The characters exhibit flaws that feel authentic, not like templates reserved for a typical family survival adventure. The children, for example, make mistakes and add to the anxiety of the parents, not because they are rebellious “movie teenagers” but because they are scared and looking to the adults for guidance. The parents, Denise Platt (Anne Hathaway) and Greg Platt (Ewan McGregor), on the other hand, are dealing with a fractured marriage. It is not presented as something that resulted from a lack of romance, but rather from a kind of growing apart most often seen in decades-old relationships.
Like any good monster film, the monster isn’t just a monster but a giant metaphor for a human condition, and these dinosaurs are no exception. Maybe a failing marriage is a tale as old as prehistoric times. And maybe that’s why it wasn’t just the Platts’ house but the entire neighbourhood that gets transported. The film has more to say than just equating a failing marriage to a dinosaur threat. The central theme of the film is sacrifice. In the end, what it takes for the Platts to save themselves and their marriage is to make sacrifices: one in a conventional sense, and another by letting go of a past version of themselves. Anne Hathaway, with her incredible performance, provides the axis on which the film's emotional weight hinges. The scene where she stands utterly frozen after a shocking, pivotal moment and picks herself up to move on is already incredible on paper, but Hathaway makes sure you never forget it.
While preserving the dread of a prehistoric survival thriller, the film still leaves moments for dry humour, entertaining gore, and takes its time to establish the lifestyle, personal beliefs, and the emotional state of every primary character even before the central conflict of the story kicks off. The End of Oak Street could have stretched its premise in several other directions and still delivered an entertaining experience, and even though it could have done more, what we ultimately end up with is a rare and interesting occurrence of a wholesome family adventure marrying a sharp prehistoric survival thriller.
