By Marc Butterfield
THE END OF OAK STREET is the perfect popcorn flick.
After a mysterious cosmic event rips Oak Street from suburbia and transports their neighborhood to someplace unknown, the Platt family soon discovers that their very survival depends on them sticking together as they navigate their now unrecognizable surroundings.
Set in 1982, THE END OF OAK STREET is a suspenseful and action-packed film full of ravenous dinosaurs and murderous creatures that try to hunt down the family and their neighbors the entire time. When the neighborhood gets transported into a prehistoric world full of murderous dinosaurs it all happens in the blink of an eye.
Even with their flaws, you like the Platt’s. Denise Platt, played by Anne Hathaway, has two children. She has Audrey, who has a love for astronomy and science, played by Maisy Stella, and teenage son, Brian, who’s a good kid and played by Christian Convery. She’s married to Greg Platt, played by Ewan McGregor. And they have their dog, Starbuck. They’re a very normal family. They live in a small suburb. They eat dinner together. They go to block parties. They take part in potato sack races. The kids have secrets. Greg has a secret. Denise has a secret.
One day, the Platts and their entire neighborhood wake up, and everything looks the same, but it’s different. It’s their street, but the power’s not working and the water’s not working and suddenly they start to hear screams, and everything feels very strange. And then things get really, really weird. So, it’s a story about a family, when suddenly these supernatural things happen.
Unlike many dinosaur films, THE END OF OAK STREET intentionally features species from different prehistoric eras. Rather than striving for strict chronological accuracy, Mitchell embraced a mix of dinosaurs to heighten the mystery surrounding the film’s supernatural time-travel portal, reinforcing the idea that creatures from across millions of years of Earth’s history have been pulled into the same neighborhood. The giant snake-worm that slithers through the house is the stuff of nightmares.
There will be much discussion amongst viewers about the entire plot. The family, the singular cause of the time displacement, the nature of time travel, paradoxes, the difference between the people who step up in extreme circumstances, and those that succumb to to fear and panic. It’s not just about the when and where, but about the who, and how they react. Nobody is safe, but the relationships they cling to can be the difference between survival and death. Don’t judge anyone in this movie by your first glance. Sometimes fire destroys, but sometimes it tempers the hardest steel.
Audiences are brought into this total thrill ride by Mitchell’s team that includes director of photography Michael Gioulakis, production designer Maya Shimoguchi, editor John Axelrad, music supervisor George Drakoulias, composer Michael Giacchino’s score and costume designer Erin Benach.
THE END OF OAK STREET is an amazing Summer romp, a family story, and adventure, with terror, and fire and peril, but also a lot of humor, a thought-provoking time travel tale, and a darned good investment of your Summer movie money.
THE END OF OAK STREET is in theaters and IMAX August 14.
RATING: 3 1/2 out of 4 stars.
Contributed by Michelle McCue
