Coming soon to your neighborhood: Dinosaurs
Dinosaur DNA in the movies goes far back, beyond Spielberg’s Jurassic Park to silent films like The Lost World (1925), in which explorers encountered living dinos, through Skull Island in King Kong (1933), to The Land That Time Forgot (1974), and so on.
While not new, David Robert Mitchell’s dino-driven action drama The End of Oak Street starring Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway takes a much-trodden premise and adds a twist: what if the dinos invaded your neighborhood?
The result feels like a cross between one of those Jurassic World sequels and a Twilight Zone episode—specifically, the one called “It’s a Good Life…” where a scary young boy whose angry thoughts instantly manifest decides to transport his little midwestern town—lock, stock and barrel—into some cosmic void where (yes) dinosaurs still roam on the horizon.
That old black-and-white TV episode might have been on Mitchell’s mind, as The End of Oak Street finds the Platt family—Greg (McGregor), Denise (Hathaway), Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery)—and their whole neighborhood suddenly relocated, after one stormy night, among prehistoric jungles and roaming gangs of sauropods and theropods.
This sounds like it could be played as pure comedy, featuring Jack Black’s mobile eyebrows perhaps, but Mitchell has a knack for character-built dramas like It Follows and Under the Silver Lake, so there’s a bit more nuance.
Firstly, we realize the Greg and Denise marriage is on the rocks: Greg lost his job and is delivering pizzas from his family car, and Denise is typing away on a novel in her basement, trying to escape the family crisis. Greg is depicted as a kind of unambitious nice guy, given to dad jokes and ’80s jogging shorts. Denise has that unspecified marital dissatisfaction that was common in ‘80s movies. There is a bit about religious belief, and you think it will lead to some kind of schism between the family members, but the plot point kind of fizzles out.
What takes over instead is the idea of the Platts watching in horror as, one morning, all their neighbors are running around, trying not to get eaten by dinosaurs. So the Platts must work together to figure out how to survive.
Mitchell maximizes the goofy action premise through good casting and a feel for both adrenaline-pumping scenes and funny details. (You will never again not think about dinosaurs’ sex habits after watching The End of Oak Street.) And Hathaway is a memorable presence, ready to unload a shotgun at a charging Allosaurus or a swooping Petrodactyl.
Produced by J.J. Abrams, this has his branding all over it—from the Spielberg-lifted shots of suburban kids coming over an asphalt horizon on a row of bikes (hello, E.T.!), to the focus on ’80s pop culture (TV shows, coffee commercials, band posters, brands), to the very John Williams-like soundtrack by Michael Giacchino, who scored Jurassic World among others.
I kind of wanted the music to be a little less movie-coded and more mysterious, or perhaps suggestive of dread, because the plight of the Platts and the rest of Oak Street feels pretty grim at times. Dinosaurs are not like ordinary neighborhood prowlers; they’re pretty relentless in trying to eat you, at least in movies. Obviously, Mitchell wanted a more family-friendly tone here, though the amount of carnage is not for the squeamish.
He reminds me a little of the overly prolific M. Night Shyamalan, who never met a premise he didn’t relentlessly beat to death (with a few exceptions) or smother in dialogue and characters. Mitchell has a way with unspooling a premise, throwing in some characters you care about a bit, but without M. Night’s overt flourishes.
The End of Oak Street succeeds to the extent that Mitchell doesn’t take his story too seriously. It’s not overly clever; action is the driver. He’s skilled at withholding information from the characters, Hitchcock-style, but we can see it, building suspense, as when a huge prehistoric worm comes slithering into the Platts’ house, and everyone’s too distracted to notice it. It’s scary, but also raises a smile. Fun goes a long way in making this dino dash watchable.
