Ewan McGregor, left, and Anne Hathaway in a scene from The End of Oak Street.The Associated Press
The End of Oak Street
Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell
Starring Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor and Maisy Stella
Rating PG
Run time 99 minutes
Release date Aug. 14
Critic’s Pick
For a movie about bloodthirsty prehistoric dinosaurs rampaging around a teleported chunk of 1980s American suburbia, there is an admirable display of restraint coursing through The End of Oak Street.
At nearly every turn and twist, of which there are many, writer-director David Robert Mitchell’s film could have hit its audience over the head with the most blunt and dull of mallets. The director could have, for instance, employed the kind of annoyingly wiseacre humour that has infected so many contemporary big-budget thrillers (for once, a character is allowed to say, “I think it’s gone,” and not immediately be proven wrong about the status of that particular threat). Or he could have peppered his film with too-obvious winks and nods (we get a TV set briefly playing a scene from The Love Boat instead of, say, The Twilight Zone).
Instead, The End of Oak Street wisely plays it straight and smart – or at least smart enough to know that there are great joys to be had in dumb fun done well.
The film follows the Platt family whose entire community is overrun by dinosaurs.The Associated Press
The story is simple, even though its main characters are constantly confused. One day in 1982, a few blocks of sleepy Anywhere, America, are cosmically transported through time and space to the Mesozoic Era. Why and how? Who cares! Certainly not Mitchell, who is rightfully far more concerned with staging and executing giddy, wildly entertaining dino attacks.
Of course, all the spectacular slaughter – which pushes the PG limit further than Mitchell’s most obvious forebearer, Steven Spielberg, did back in the 1980s with Temple of Doom – wouldn’t mean much if we didn’t care about who might be getting chomped.
And so Mitchell, who previously mixed relatable characters with queasy carnage in the 2014 horror film It Follows, centres the action around the Platt family. Mother Denise (Anne Hathaway) is a hopeful novelist on the verge of divorcing her conflict-avoidant husband Greg (Ewan McGregor), while tween Brian (Christian Convery) and his older sister Audrey (Maisy Stella) try to seek comfort where they can.
The PG-rated film hits theatres on Aug. 14.The Associated Press
Unfortunately for the Platts, there’s no time for family therapy once their entire community is overrun by dinosaurs, which are picking off their neighbours faster and fiercer than any creature found in Jurassic Park. Scratch that; the more apt predecessor to The End of Oak Street might actually be Zack Snyder’s peerless opening to his 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, in which rampaging zombies destroyed the American Dream of suburbia with one similarly quick, bloody swoop.
Whatever cinematic influences helped Mitchell find his way to Oak Street, though, there is no denying the filmmaker’s zest for keeping things as efficient and entertaining as possible. Even the most cynical, seen-it-Allosaurus viewer will be forced to scream and shriek during a sequence involving, in no particular order, a bloodied Hathaway, a kitchen knife and a dinosaur that resembles a demonic cross between Barney and that giant freaky snake from Harry Potter. Life, as always, finds a way.