Warning: This post contains spoilers for The End of Oak Street

There have been a long line of dinosaur-centered movies in the last few decades. Jurassic Park kicked off a years-long fascination that audiences have collectively had with the prehistoric animals. Now, there’s a new film that joins the growing list of dinosaur movies.

The End of Oak Street, which is out in theaters this weekend, tells the story of a family who are put in a terrifying situation when their neighborhood is suddenly surrounded by Earth as it was millions of years ago. The family must not only survive, but to somehow escape from the dinosaurs as well.

The End of Oak Street features an all-star cast, led by Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway. Their star power helps carry the film to new heights, especially McGregor, whose charm on screen has only gotten stronger since he appeared in two of his early career successes, Trainspotting and Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.

McGregor ends up playing a huge role in the ending of the film, which gives audiences answers about The End of Oak Street’s story (and, mainly, how the neighborhood was transported). Still, there are some questions left unanswered come the conclusion of the story, but clues sprinkled in throughout may hold the answer to these.

What Really Happened To The End Of Oak Street Neighborhood Explained

The End of Oak Street begins with a simple family, with a father who’s struggling to make ends meet, a son who is having trouble with some of the other kids his age, and a mother who has left a lot unsaid from her loved ones. That all sounds like a setup for a typical drama, but this film is far from it.

Instead, the presence of the dinosaurs turns things from a drama to an Amblin-style horror movie. At first, the Platt family (understandably) have no idea why their neighborhood is suddenly in pre-historic times. However, Anne Hathaway’s character pieces things together quickly.

The family’s son, Brian, is the first one to notice that something is wrong. In the days leading up to the change, he sees what are later referred to as tremors — big flashes of lightning that his family brushes off as lightning as part of the strong storm.

From that, Hathaway pieces together what’s really going on. The family’s neighborhood is being affected by tremors, which grow larger and larger until the big one hits. Each tremor creates a portal back in time to millions of years ago, sucking in everything in its immediate radius.

The End Of Oak Street's Time Travel Explained

The explanation for the neighborhood transporting back to the dinosaur era is rooted in time travel. The End of Oak Street does something unique with this concept, however, and differs from many other time-travel centered films. The David Robert Mitchell-directed film doesn’t use time machine devices, and also doesn’t try to explain every intricate detail of what’s happening.

Instead, the broad concept is put forth to the audience, and that’s all that the story requires. Signs of time travel first crop up when small prehistoric plants begin growing at rapid rates in neighborhood back gardens. Then, as already stated, the tremors grow bigger and bigger, to the point where the entire neighborhood is sucked back in time.

Time travel is also seen later on in the film, too. Ewan McGregor’s character falls victim to a tyrannosaurus rex attack, being eaten by the dinosaur in front of his family. That appeared to be the ending of McGregor’s role in the story, but he actually still had a part to play, and it’s directly related to time travel.

The family eventually find another small tremor, which opens up a portal. They jump through and find themselves back on the same night that everything changed (about twenty minutes before).

How Denise Platt Saved The Neighborhood — Did Everyone Survive?

Because they reappeared back in the 1980s about twenty minutes before the neighborhood disappears, Denise is able to save some of the townsfolk. She uses a phone to call her husband, who then arrives a short time later. Doing so also meant that McGregor’s character was taken out of the blast radius, meaning he avoided the portal.

The film’s final moments also reveal that Denise saved more than just her husband. A news report shows that Denise also saves the librarian, who talks to reporters about how Hathaway’s character called her and warned her of what’s to come. The antagonistic neighbor is also interviewed, and says that he owes Denise his life.

Ultimately, what happened to other members of the neighborhood remains unclear. The news report still calls the event a tragedy, which implies that many likely didn’t make it in the end. However, Denise was still able to save some of the people in her immediate vicinity, making her a hero in the eyes of the town.

What Caused The Wormholes In The End Of Oak Street Explained

One thing that isn’t explicitly stated is why these tremors, portals, and wormholes started appearing in the neighborhood. It’s heavily implied that these events are the result of some sort of mysterious phenomenon, as opposed to being caused by humans.

Interestingly, the existence of these types of wormholes is (somewhat) plausible. Author Carl Sagan proposed the general idea of a traversable wormhole (aka a black hole that wouldn’t immediately destroy whatever entered it), and physicists Kip Thorne and Michael Morris used that to prove that, theoretically, a wormhole like this is actually plausible (and rooted in what Albert Einstein worked on during his illustrious career).

Do Dinosaurs Just Exist In Modern Day In The End Of Oak Street Now?

The news report also mentions something interesting — many of the dinosaurs that came in the other direction of the wormhole were killed by humans, but some were captured for scientists to study. This highlights that, in the world of The End of Oak Street, dinosaurs exist in the 1980s. A Jurassic Park-type situation would be very possible in this world as a result of this revelation, which also sets up potential sequels for The End of Oak Street.