The Platt family live in what seems like a perfect slice of 1982 American suburbia, when they find their entire street transported millions of years into the past during a stormy night. The outcome is that the secretly fractious family have to pull together and fight for their lives against an array of fearsome dinosaurs.
The End of Oak Street feels like a throwback to good old fashioned family adventure movies and a rather brilliant homage to the career of Steven Spielberg, taking in a troubled family, dinosaurs and summer blockbuster fun.
We meet the Platt family during a street barbecue, in what seems to be an idyllic life. However, all is not what it seems. Greg (Ewan McGregor) is hiding his financial struggles from his wife Denise (Anne Hathaway), who in turn is surreptitiously writing a book that is a thinly veiled story of her desperation to leave him. They argue all the time, ensuring that children Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery) are constantly worried that their parents will be getting a divorce.
As we slowly get a feel for the family and their life, some odd occurrences begin to unfold. An extinct plant appears fully grown, a rather large amount of animal poo appears in a garden and strange lights are appearing in the sky. And it is perhaps in this slow reveal of what has happened that the film is at its best. If it were not for the plot being plastered over every piece of marketing it would be even more of a perfectly staged mystery. The camera is framed in such a way that we keep getting glimpses of what might be happening, but it’s just out of sight. And then chaos erupts into the Platt’s life.
The dinosaurs in The End of Oak Street feature the feathers and fur that Jurassic Park/World’s scientists have been telling us about all along and they are brutally fearsome. As the various action sequences play out with superbly positioned camerawork, we are left in no doubt that these creatures are not to be messed with.
Anne Hathaway is the standout in the cast and is superb as a mother under huge pressure trying to keep her family together. The effects work is great and the action snappy. There is also a large amount of prominent split-diopter (where two different things remain in focus at the same time) shots for the film nerds that give a sense of otherness to the portrayal of the characters as they discuss what is happening to them.
That is not to say it is perfect, however. If you like events to be explained with some level of detail you will be sorely disappointed, with the film more focused on the thrill of humans running from dinosaurs than explaining the why. And of course the Platt family make the sort of choices we need our protagonists to make in a film where we need to see some peril. Personally, those criticisms were not concerns of mine given what the film is trying to achieve. My main concern was that I never found myself engaging with anyone other than Denise, making the peril less of a concern when the likes of Brian were running around a dinosaur-infested neighbourhood.
The End of Oak Street is a fun watch. Most importantly though, it feels a bit fresh by virtue of being a throwback to the kind of film that is few and far between now. It may not reinvent the family adventure genre, but there is something rather enjoyable about a film that simply wants to deliver dinosaurs, family drama and summer blockbuster fun without overcomplicating things.
