The End of Oak Street Review—Monstrously entertaining from start to finish

Filled to the brim with thrills and punctuated by endearing performances by Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, The End of Oak Street is an unassuming dinosaur survival horror hit that's monstrously entertaining from start to finish.

The End of Oak Street follows the Platt family—cynical mom Denise (Anne Hathaway) and her insouciant husband Greg (Ewan McGregor), and teenaged kids Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery)—whose perfectly ordinary suburban life goes completely off the rails when a mysterious event rips their entire neighborhood out of the 1980s and drops them in the prehistoric era. And unfortunately for them, they share this era with bloodthirsty dinosaurs! With no obvious way home and danger closing in from every direction, the already-fractured family has to put their problems aside and stick together if they have any hope of surviving whatever the hell happened to Oak Street.

A plot like this feels like it shouldn't work in today's era of bombastic billion-dollar blockbusters, but director David Robert Mitchell finds the heart in the middle of all the dinosaur mayhem to bring something fun, exciting, and captivating the big screen. And for guys like me who grew up with Jaws and Jurassic Park, the irony-free charm and whimsy of 80's action adventure is evident throughout.

A lot of it comes down to Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor's terrific chemistry as husband-and-wife tandem Denise and Greg. David Robert Mitchell's script fleshes these characters out beyond the usual disaster-movie archetypes. Their fears, struggles, and frustrations are all out on the screen—as well as their hopes and unrelenting drive to survive. The Platts actually feel like a family, giving the movie an emotional weight that keeps it grounded even when CGI dinosaurs start stomping in.

Speaking of, dinosaur fans like me would be glad to know that the variety of species featured in this movie is refreshing. Confidently moving away from tried-and-true dinosaur staples like the T.rex or the velociraptor, The End of Oak Street presents some new monsters to terrify you—including a slithery one in a nail-biting sequence you have to see to believe.

But like me, The End of Oak Street is no stranger to cliché, as it leans heavily into plot contrivances as an excuse to bust out jump scares and perils aplenty. You can set a watch to how often characters would conveniently lose self-preservation—or even peripheral vision—for cheap near-death encounters with dinosaurs. But the nitpicking is often drowned by my screams and the screams of a fully-packed IMAX theater fully immersed in the illusion—a seal of approval if I ever heard one.

This is the most dinosaur fun I've had in the cinema since the first Jurassic Park, and I don't say it lightly. The End of Oak Street could be the sleeper hit of the season, and deservedly so.