“THE END OF OAK STREET” Movie Review — Spielberg-Lite
Hey look! A sci-fi horror dinosaur movie that doesn’t have the words “Jurassic World” in the title. Isn’t that a breath of fresh air?
Between the rampant assembly line of perfunctory dinosaur sludge Universal Studios and Spielberg-founded Amblin Entertainment have pinched out time and again, it feels quite refreshing to experience an original concept for a summer blockbuster involving these prehistoric behemoths themselves. Plus, it’s got the experienced horror director David Robert Mitchell (“It Follows”) attached to it. This all sounds like a recipe for a straightforward, yet blood-chilling survival-horror film.
The black cloud, unfortunately, is that a project like The End of Oak Street is produced by Bad Robot, a studio founded by Spielberg protégé, J.J. Abrams. Now, as much as I want Abrams to make a comeback of his own (hopefully that becomes the case in next film in 2027, “The Great Beyond”), it’s hard to ignore the controversial impact he has left behind on such franchises as the rebooted Star Trek movies, and two of the three Star Wars sequels, “The Force Awakens” and “The Rise of Skywalker”.
But I also want to make this clear: the reason why The End of Oak Street isn’t good shouldn’t be squarely pointed in the direction of Abrams himself. The reason why “The End of Oak Street” isn’t good is because it’s a really stupid movie.
Set in 1980s Michigan, an enormous, blinding light surrounds the entire neighborhood of Oak Street. Suddenly, the power’s gone out and the water’s stopped working, yet everything appears the same. What the Platt family soon discover is that their entire neighborhood is not only populated with ugly-looking CG dinosaurs, but they have been sent back to the Jurassic period by some sort of anomaly or wormhole that covered the entire town. In a fight for survival, Denise (Anne Hathaway), Greg (Ewan McGregor), Audrey (Maisy Stella), and Brian (Christian Convery) have to stand together and, by some miracle, find a way to get back.
There are a lot of similarities to Steven Spielberg films being thrown at The End of Oak Street, the problem is that the enterprise feels more like a ripoff of Spielberg than a genuine throwback to Hollywood’s most treasured directors. Whether it’s the use of the nostalgic, suburban aesthetic of the 1980s, the dangerous, mysterious unknown encountering ordinary life, Michael Giacchino’s score pantomiming the whimsical, sentimental tone of John Williams, or the “The Lost World” idea of dinosaurs roaming a suburban town, Mitchell tries and struggles to figure out what made these motifs from Spielberg’s prior filmography work.
The first act of the film starts off remotely promising. The Platts family trying to navigate what’s going on, where they are and what they have to do is reasonably well acted and has you intrigued for more. But what’s funny is that the minute the dinosaurs enter the picture, that’s where the movie reaches new levels of tomfoolery (yes, I used the word “tomfoolery”). Of course, dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures hunting and feasting on the whole town is terrifying and for a few scenes. The downside is that most of these events happen because the movie makes the sound of an Allosaurus’s footsteps or a Titanoboa’s slither more quiet than a dust mite, and that The Platts themselves make some of the dumbest decisions, even though they are doing everything they can to stay together and survive.
One scene in particular involves the son, Brian, trying to rescue his dog, Starbuck, after he escaped from his dog house. Rather than stay inside and stick with the family to stay alive, Brian notices Starbuck being chased down by a carnivorous dinosaur, he decides to go outside to find him in a neighborhood filled with dinosaurs that could eat him.
Subplots are simply either forgotten about and/or so thinly developed it's as if the film thought about inserting them at the last second. The inclusion of Brian having trouble with a local bully whose brother’s arm Brian accidentally broke was a complete waste of time, and Audrey developing a romance with the neighborhood girl that Brian had a crush on happens so abruptly and without any semblance of development or chemistry. It’s just the film going, “well, I guess they’re together now.”
The most amount of depth that you get from this family is whether or not the mother, Denise, and the father, Greg, are going to file for divorce. With Greg trying to provide for his family as best he can by doing odd-jobs and part-time pizza deliveries after losing his previous job, Denise is writing the first draft of her novel, and is contemplating leaving the family when things aren’t financially working out. It’s the best amount of characterization the film has to offer, and both Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor do a terrific job of portraying two parents in turmoil.
Just when you think that the absurdity can finally come to an end, the film decides in its own conclusion to not only give the audience a cheap happy ending (which is kind of screwed up the more you think about), but to prompt up more unanswered questions about these wormholes, their existence and purpose in the story. The film makes a big deal of these wormholes that appear and suck families and their homes to another time period, and all that build up amounts to is a payoff that never arrives other than a news broadcast explaining how things worked out in the end.
I’m all for original ideas, even original dinosaur films, but The End of Oak Street’s story and characters felt like it was written in the stone age. Occasionally, you’ll encounter an interesting idea or two that hasn’t been seen before, but among the liberally borrowed Spielberg elements and references, witless characters and crappy, unpolished CGI dinosaurs, you’re better off waiting for the Anthony Bourdain biopic, “Tony,” to arrive in theaters.
Over 30 years on, and to this day, we still don’t have a single dinosaur movie that stands toe-to-toe with Spielberg’s uncontested golden dinosaur egg from 1993.
RATING: 1.5/5
