In 1993, Steven Spielberg rocked the world with Jurassic Park. A few years later, he followed it up with The Lost World, a movie I still appreciate. But since then, I honestly don’t think we’ve gotten a truly great dinosaur movie—at least, not until now.
I don’t care for the Jurassic World movies, but The End of Oak Street feels like the kind of dinosaur movie I’ve been waiting for. In fact, if you showed me Disclosure Day and The End of Oak Street without telling me who directed them and asked me which one was made by Steven Spielberg, I probably would’ve picked The End of Oak Street. David Robert Mitchell absolutely nails that Spielbergian, Amblin-style magic.
Set in 1982, the movie feels like Jurassic Park mixed with Super 8, Stranger Things, an episode of The Twilight Zone, and basically every ’80s movie about children dealing with parents on the verge of divorce. And somehow, it all works.
The movie opens with a neighborhood block party in July. Everyone is outside, cooking on portable barbecues, playing games, taking Polaroids, and actually interacting with their neighbors. There isn’t a cell phone in sight. It immediately gave me this warm, nostalgic feeling for a simpler time. It made me realize how much I miss that sense of community—the idea that your whole neighborhood could come together and just have a good time. Maybe it’s nostalgia talking, but the opening genuinely made me a little emotional.
And then the dinosaurs show up.
Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor play parents Greg and Denise, whose children Audrey and Brian are played by Maisy Stella and Christian Convery. The kids can sense that something isn’t right between their parents, but before they can really deal with that, something much bigger begins happening in their neighborhood.
Flashing lights appear. Their dog Starbuck—one of the MVPs of the movie—starts barking. Trees that look millions of years old begin appearing. There are screams at night. The power goes out. There’s no water. And, much like the shark in Jaws, Mitchell wisely keeps the dinosaurs teased for a while before finally letting them loose.
Once the dinosaur action kicks in, this movie absolutely rips.
The dinosaurs look fantastic, and the camera work is even better. Mitchell shoots the suburban setting beautifully, especially when characters are running through backyards, fences and streets trying to escape dinosaurs. There are some fantastic tracking shots, stylish close-ups and compositions where one character is in the foreground while another is talking in the background. There’s a scene where the family sits together trying to figure out what’s happening, and the camerawork alone made me appreciate how much thought went into the visual language of this movie.
And then there’s Michael Giacchino’s score. The second the movie started, I heard that score and immediately thought, Oh, this movie is going to fucking rip. It has that wonderful ’80s adventure-movie sound, and it perfectly complements the tone.
The best part is that The End of Oak Street doesn’t feel the need to explain everything. The characters don’t know whether they’ve been transported back to prehistoric times, whether prehistoric times have somehow come to them, or whether it’s some combination of the two. Portals open, strange things happen, and the movie basically says: here’s your explanation—dinosaurs are in the suburbs. Have fun.
And honestly? I’m completely okay with that.
Sometimes movies like this are better when they don’t stop every five minutes to explain their own mythology. This is a fun dinosaur movie. I don’t need a ten-minute exposition dump about the science behind everything.
The movie also gets surprisingly violent for a PG-13. They really push that rating to the limit. There are plenty of people getting eaten, some pretty gnarly dinosaur attacks, and even an F-bomb thrown in for good measure. There’s a particular moment where I literally had my hands over my mouth because I couldn’t believe the movie actually went there. I could see where the scene was headed, but when it happened, I was still thinking, Holy shit. Good for this movie.
There are also some fantastic set pieces. There’s a Jurassic Park callback involving a giant pile of dinosaur shit that had me waiting for Ewan McGregor to deliver the obvious line. There’s a terrific stampede sequence where dinosaurs are running over a car. There’s a giant snake that leads to a completely insane sequence inside a house. And throughout it all, the dinosaurs actually feel like dinosaurs. There aren’t any ridiculous mutant creatures or over-designed monsters. They’re just terrifying prehistoric animals, and that’s all the movie needs.
I also really liked the young cast. Maisy Stella and Christian Convery are terrific, and because they’re not actors I immediately associate with a dozen other blockbuster movies, it added even more to that nostalgic feeling. There’s something very ’80s/’90s about taking a couple of relatively unknown young actors and putting them alongside major movie stars like Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor. It makes the movie feel more authentic.
Speaking of Anne Hathaway, this really does feel like her year. I’ve now seen four movies with her this year, and she’s been fantastic in all of them. She’s especially good here. She’s carrying a huge amount of this movie on her shoulders, and you can tell she had an absolute blast making it. The fact that Hathaway was so enthusiastic about working with David Robert Mitchell was also a great sign going in. She can work with basically any director in Hollywood, so when she was praising Mitchell, I paid attention.
And Mitchell absolutely delivers.
The movie is less than an hour and forty minutes, and it absolutely flies by. There’s no bloat. No unnecessary exposition. No point where I was checking the time. It’s just one great dinosaur sequence after another, anchored by two fantastic movie stars and a terrific group of young actors.
There’s also a little something at the very end that could potentially set up a sequel. I wouldn’t call it a massive twist, but it’s a clever little detail that you have to be paying attention to. When I caught it, I thought, That’s fucking clever. I’d absolutely be interested in seeing where this story could go next.
More than anything, though, The End of Oak Street reminded me why I love going to the movies.
I’m an elder millennial, and people love to say that our generation is too nostalgic. But I don’t think it’s necessarily nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. I really do think we grew up in a simpler time, and this movie taps directly into that feeling. The warm neighborhood opening, the Polaroids, the lack of technology, the kids, the Amblin influence—it all made me smile.
Then it throws dinosaurs into the middle of it.
And who doesn’t fucking love dinosaurs when they’re done properly?
The End of Oak Street is Jurassic Park meets Super 8 meets Stranger Things meets E.T. with a little Twilight Zone thrown in for good measure. It’s campy, it’s fun, it’s stylish, it’s violent, and it never takes itself too seriously.
It’s exactly the kind of end-of-summer blockbuster I wanted.
After decades of mediocre dinosaur movies, David Robert Mitchell finally gave us one that feels special again.
A truly terrific time at the movies.
The End Of Oak Street – 88/100