Review: ‘The End of Oak Street’ Takes a Bite Out of Suburbia
An '80s suburban family faces rampaging dinosaurs in David Robert Mitchell's suspenseful sci-fi survival thriller.
An entertaining mashup of Spielbergian fantasy, ’50s sci-fi, and tense domestic dramedy, The End of Oak Street gathers suspense and momentum slowly but surely. Before all hell breaks loose, a well-composed picture comes into view of a Midwest suburban cul-de-sac enjoying the summer of 1982.
Though behind the smiles and good vibes, and the gleeful neighborhood block party with limbo, music, games, and balloons, somebody, somewhere, is quietly suffering. This is the suburbs, after all.
So, it’s Denise Platt (Anne Hathaway) we find suppressing her feelings of rage and resentment, despite a seemingly stable life with cheery husband Greg (Ewan McGregor), son Brian (Christian Convery), daughter Audrey (Maisy Stella), and the family’s beloved dog Starbuck.
Primarily, she’s unhappy in her marriage, and unhappy with Greg. While he’s out delivering pizzas in his hatchback, Denise is in the basement pounding away at her secret manuscript.
Writer-director David Robert Mitchell (It Follows), evidently mining the era’s predilection for divorce stories, unfolds the Platt family drama alongside a mounting series of unexplained events around their end of Oak Street.
Hathaway, in period-appropriate Margot Kidder bangs, invests Denise’s discontent with persuasive fire, and the chemistry with McGregor, somewhat miscast, feels off in a way that doesn’t hurt the marital discord plot they’re selling. But the whys and wherefores of their “are-we-still-in-love” story remain so vague, the drama never holds nearly the intrigue of all the strange goings-on outside the Platt household.
A stray news report warns of NASA probing unusual ripples in space. Their neighbor points out a strange-looking palm tree growing in her backyard. The Platts spot a weird light flickering on the night wind. Then a storm hits, and the whole neighborhood goes dark, just as it’s becoming clear something deadly is stalking the cul-de-sac.
The End of Oak Street provides an excellent example of the monster movie adage, taught well by Jaws and Alien, that the less you see of the monster, the scarier it is — until such time that the movie lets its monsters loose to terrorize the good, innocent, and practically helpless.
In this case, the pressure rarely lets up for even a moment after the monsters are revealed, and the residents of Oak Street discover there are dinosaurs roaming their streets. Reimagining the familiar smooth-scaled Jurassic behemoths as more birdlike, fanged, feathered beasts, Oak Street aims for genuine horror, injecting several gruesome deaths by dinosaur into the genre mix.
The colorful CGI creatures can look impressive, but the effects integrating them into live-action shots aren’t seamless. Generally, the suggestions of a dino’s presence off-camera are more effective here than when they’re revealed in full.
The sci-fi reasoning behind the incredible time-space collision is more effective in the abstract. The more revealed about this cosmic convergence, the dumber it sounds, especially as certain characters work it all out like genius astrophysicists.
The film works best at a pace so relentless that no one has time to think, because just when they’re sure they can stop to breathe, here comes another catastrophe. “Maybe this isn’t happening in Chicago,” Denise ponders hopefully. Despite it all, the movie never loses its sense of humor, or a sense of wonder at waking up to a world completely changed from what you knew.
The End of Oak Street (★★★☆☆) is rated PG-13 and playing in theaters nationwide. Visit fandango.com.
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