Directed by David Robert Mitchell (It Follows; Under the Silver Lake) — Screenplay by David Robert Mitchell.
I think it’s fair to say that we’ve been treated to an undersupply of dinosaur films since Steven Spielberg and his crew perfected big-screen dinosaur action storytelling with the masterpiece that is 1993’s Jurassic Park. For whatever reason, there haven’t been many attempts to tell new stories with dinosaurs, other than the increasingly threadbare Jurassic sequels. The most notable live-action attempts have been Peter Jackson’s King Kong from the mid-2000s, which I quite like, and Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ quite underwhelming Adam Driver-vehicle titled 65. This summer, we’re treated to another attempt at non-Jurassic World dinosaur-centric cinema. The Warner Bros. picture is the long-awaited fourth feature from It Follows-director David Robert Mitchell, whose last film was the 2018 stoner noir film Under the Silver Lake, which has amassed something of a cult following. I thoroughly enjoyed both his horror breakthrough and his aforementioned cult film, so I can say that I’ve enjoyed every film of his that I’ve seen up to this point. The same goes for The End of Oak Street, which is a terrific crowd-pleaser of a dinosaur summer flick that ticks all the right boxes.
David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street is set in an American suburban neighborhood in 1982. It follows the Platt family — parents Denise (played by Anne Hathaway) and Greg (played by Ewan McGregor), and children Audrey (played by Maisy Stella) and Brian (played by Christian Convery) — as their entire neighborhood is somehow transported into the Mesozoic Era, in which dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Now, the family of four (and their family dog, Starbuck), as well as their neighbors, must try to survive while being surrounded — and hunted — by everything from an allosaurus to a flock of pterodactyls. As they try to make sense of their new reality, they must also figure out if they can somehow return home with their lives intact.
A funny thing happened at the end of the film, when I saw it in a local theater the other day: people cheered and clapped as it cut to the closing credits. This may be the norm elsewhere, but it certainly isn’t in Denmark, where I think I’ve only really experienced it at major fan-event-esque films like Star Wars: The Force Awakens or Avengers: Endgame. I was taken aback by it, but I’ll also admit that, at one point in the film, I sort of fist-pumped to a particularly exciting scene. Given these reactions, from both me and others, I think it’s fair to say that what Mitchell has built here is a genuine crowd-pleaser, as I claimed earlier.
What is it that the film does so well that it elicits such reactions? There are multiple reasons why, from the style of film it is designed to be and all the way to the kind of guts that the film has in certain scenes. But, first and foremost, it’s a refreshingly briskly paced film with a relatively short runtime of just under 100 minutes. I was also quite impressed by how much the opening act packed in with regard to setting up the characters, such as how Anne Hathaway’s character is secretly writing a novel about the life she desires. It’s not particularly original, but it puts the actors to good use, as Hathaway and McGregor’s presence and dedication to the material add a lot of gravity to the situation. The film never feels clunky or like it has a lot of baggage to carry. Rather, it flies by and delivers on what you’d expect from a nostalgic sci-fi survival flick with dinosaurs.
That nostalgic aspect brings me to the aforementioned stylistic aims of the film. From the get-go, Mitchell’s film is going for a Spielbergian Amblin-esque mood. It’s not just the fact that this is a film about a family in the early 1980s (with key characters whose marriage may or may not be on the verge of a complete breakdown), or how we get this brief scene with Christian Convery’s character and his friend group, which feels like it was directly inspired by both The Goonies and Stand By Me. You also feel it in how its type of creature violence pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable without crossing over into R-rated violence. Then there’s Michael Giacchino’s score, which evokes pleasant memories of watching family adventure films. It’s such a nice concoction that is reminiscent of a type of film so many of us grew up on. Often, I feel, these 1980s settings are used more for dress-up than to evoke the era, and I felt that this film found the right balance without tipping over into cheap pastiche, as other similar imitative works have.
Now, you might think to yourself as you’re reading this review that “eventually you will talk about the dinosaurs from this dinosaur movie, right?” Indeed, I will. Unlike the many Jurassic Park films, the dinosaurs on display in The End of Oak Street are feathered and hairy, thus setting it apart from those films, whether that was the intent or not. However, like with that franchise, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) also worked on the creation of the visual effects dinosaurs in this film. Still, the one caveat I have when it comes to praising the dinosaur action is that it, largely, doesn’t look quite as good or seamless whenever the creatures interact with the live-action world here. Although the creatures are all believable enough to get properly emotionally invested in the action, I did feel that certain creatures — like the snapping turtle-esque dinosaurs that show up — look more like video game creatures than cinematic dinosaurs at the level those Jurassic Park films got us used to seeing.
At the same time, the film overcomes the less-than-bulletproof, so to speak, visual effects thanks to, again, genuinely thrilling action. You see multiple different people and dinosaurs get killed and eaten in this film, including in shocking fashion and in an extended scene. The film expertly plays with audience expectations to dish out one of the more surprising and upsetting human-to-dinosaur action encounters I’ve seen in quite some time. There’s an unceremoniousness and suddenness to one of the memorable dinosaur scenes in the film that really shows just how confident they were in designing some of these scenes, and they really pull it off here. It took my breath away on more than one occasion.
I should also commend the film for its mastery of a slow-release of tension. Frankly, you really can tell this was made by the director of It Follows, as there are a couple of really strong scenes where we, as viewers, get to see something moving towards our characters in the background at a certain pace, while you become more and more desperate for them to turn around and realize what’s happening. Seeing an allosaurus, sort of, take the position of the It Follows ‘monster’ in The End of Oak Street was not on my bingo card, but here we are, and I quite enjoyed it. I also just think Mitchell’s film makes good use of the entire image in extended scenes, such as 1) seeing multiple characters race to repeatedly get the attention of an allosaurus in one shot, 2) seeing unnamed characters be chased in the background of images, or 3) one scene where we see Brian and his friend group in the background of a shot, and then the next scene tells their story. It’s just really sound and satisfying filmmaking on display.
It isn’t perfect, though. And while I did find it thrilling throughout and left the theater with a big smile on my face, it is also the kind of film that doesn’t fully hold up to scrutiny, as is often the case with narratives that utilize time travel. While there are definitely pretty notable sci-fi timey-wimey paradoxes here, I am willing to forgive the film because I think the payoff that it delivers towards the end of the final act is so emotionally satisfying that it overcomes its own tripwires, so to speak. I will say, though, that it does feel like the very last scene in the film has been tacked on to fulfill demands of either the studio or some test audience. Not only did it feel unnecessary, but what is depicted also felt a little bit too unrealistically Hollywood, as it were. Stylistically, I should also say that while I do enjoy seeing the use of a split-diopter shot once in a while, I thought the many times Mitchell’s film makes use of these in extended dialogue scenes were distracting. It works just fine in the early instances, but later, when the family of four discusses what their life is now, it became too noticeable and got in the way of what the scene was trying to convey.
On the whole, David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street is a delightfully nostalgic and consistently thrilling dinosaur-centric sci-fi survival flick. It is well-paced and short without feeling hacked to bits. Although the dinosaurs themselves don’t quite look as good as their Jurassic Park counterparts, the action is every bit as riveting as the best scenes in the series’ sequels. Indeed, I think The End of Oak Street is more or less as good as the best sequels to Spielberg’s early 1990s dinosaur theme park masterpiece. For some, that’s not a high bar to clear, but personally, I think it’s a very good sign that a new dinosaur picture can rival The Lost World and Jurassic World in most respects, as I still hold the former of the two in relatively high regard all these years later. So, if you’re the kind of person who longs for a dinosaur-centric summer movie that aims for the warm nostalgic feelings that Amblin films inspire, then I highly recommend that you check out Mitchell’s latest film. Because, warts and all, this film is a really good time at the movies.
8 out of 10
– Review written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
