Jon Crunch: Movie Review: “The End of Oak Street”

By Jon Brooks

You loved “Jurassic Park”… you enjoyed “Jurassic World”… now get ready to experience “Jurassic Neighborhood”…!

“The End of Oak Street” is the latest sci-fi thriller centered around dinosaurs to hit the big screen.

I watched this movie yesterday at the theater and have been chewing on it ever since. It is either a brilliant new take on the “man vs. dinosaur” sub-genre, or it is a heaping pile of dino-poop.

I can’t decide which.

My nine-year-old nephew (who was at the same matinee) said it is “better” than “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” (read my review). Keep in mind, the kid is a dinosaur lover (and he didn’t think “Brand New Day” had enough action).

But if the post-movie reaction from our group is any indication, feelings about this one will be all over the place.

“The End of Oak Street” stars Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor. It was written and directed by David Robert Mitchell (who wrote and directed the 2014 horror film “It Follows”) and is produced by J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot.

The entirety of the film is set in 1982 in a neighborhood in Flowervale, Michigan (a fictional suburb of Detroit).

David Robert Mitchell is a Michigan native. He was born in 1974. On the surface, this would seem to be a “nostalgia play” for the filmmaker. “Stranger Things” fans like myself are very aware that sci-fi thrillers set in the 1980s have proven themselves popular in recent years.

I turned 10 in 1982, so my initial curiosity regarding “The End of Oak Street” was piqued by the setting.

The film follows the Platt family as they are living life in Flowervale. It is late summer as the movie begins. Greg Platt (McGregor) and his wife Denise (Hathaway) are having a difficult time as a couple. Greg has had a tough time keeping a job (and is seen delivering pizza as a side gig in the movie). Denise is secretly writing a novel (and pondering divorce).

The couple’s teenage children Audry (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery) are both coping with the tension between their parents and the standard assortment of issues facing teens in these types of scripted dramas (bullying, crushes, a desire to go to your dream college, etc.)

Much of the exposition about the characters plays out during a block party in the early stages of the movie.

When a neighbor (Anne Gee Byrd) — who is proofreading Denise’s novel — asks Denise for help identifying a mysterious plant that has suddenly appeared in her backyard, the main plot is set into motion.

After looking at a Polaroid photo of the plant, a local librarian (Emily Kuroda) tells Denise that this particular plant has been extinct for millions of years.

(It seemed odd to me that the librarian had a vast repository of jurassic-era plants on tap in her brain. It would have been more credible if the two had discovered it together by doing research, or something like that, but I digress…)

In addition to the extinct plant, the Platt’s next door neighbor finds a large pile of animal feces in his yard.

Then, our protagonists experience a peculiar “storm” that causes the power to go out in the neighborhood (along with the water no longer working). Greg and Denise search the neighborhood for the family’s missing dog Starbuck and soon learn that the entire area is surrounded by a jungle-like environment.

Before they know it, the residential enclave is under siege by long-extinct dinosaurs.

That’s the setup. The movie chugs along from there as our protagonists try to find a way out.

“The End of Oak Street” has its exciting moments, but I’m not sure the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. There is only so much you can do with this type of movie as it regards nuance and characterization, but those aspects fell flat for me.

I didn’t buy McGregor and Hathaway as a married couple. I didn’t buy those kids as their kids. Again, that isn’t really the point of a movie like this, but the familial aspects of the movie didn’t work for me.

There was also a subplot about a neighbor girl named Jeanette (Jordan Alexa Davis) that felt unnecessary. I do wonder if additional character points were filmed for this movie, but ultimately left on the cutting-room floor in favor of a faster pace. It sure felt that way at times.

There were also certain techniques in the movie that felt too “film school-ish” for me.

For example, there is one particular sequence in the film where the Platt family is sitting in their living room talking to each other as the neighborhood is falling apart.

The director uses a “split focus” technique during that scene. You can see the technique on display in this frame from the movie:

It immediately brought to mind “The Chicago Way” scene in Brian De Palma’s 1987 movie “The Untouchables”. When De Palma used this technique, it helped illustrate Ness’s moral turmoil about the path Malone was suggesting, using very few words:

In “The End of Oak Street” I felt like the technique was merely used because it “looked” cool.

(I know it’s a minor quibble, but it immediately reminded me of Mr. Krainak’s “Film Theory & Criticism” class at UNO in 1996. We analyzed the implementation of framing and shot selection to create emotional resonance in a film.)

It is apparent that David Robert Mitchell is a talented director and screenwriter. I’d be curious to see what he would do with a bigger movie. He squeezes a lot out of this movie’s $85 million budget.

At this point you’re probably wondering what my final verdict is for “The End of Oak Street”…

The film moves along at a steady pace and there are some suspenseful sequences. Overall, it is an entertaining watch.

It tries desperately to capture the retro magic of recent films like “Super 8” and films of the era like “Poltergeist,” but things didn’t click. (And don’t even get me started on the movie’s ending.)

In the end, “The End of Oak Street” didn’t quite work for me.

(But my nephew loved it…)

Rated PG-13, Runtime: 1 hr, 40 min

P.S. While this is a PG-13 film, there was an awkward “mating” scene in the movie if you decide to take the little ones…