August 17, 2026
A movie review by James Berardinelli

Although The End of Oak Street can't match the Spielberg-directed first two Jurassic Park films for scope, it isn't really trying to compete in that weight class. The Jurassic Park movies were franchise building blocks—major summer blockbusters employing cutting-edge technology (with a dash of anthropomorphism thrown into the mix). By stripping away the dino-personalities, David Robert Mitchell's monster movie reminds viewers of what dinosaurs were: huge creatures driven by primitive instincts. In this kind of narrative, humans are either food or collateral damage.

The End of Oak Street requires a substantial investment in suspension of disbelief to work and, even then, there are notable narrative issues that need to be ignored. Characters often make incredibly bad decisions simply because the plot demands it, and the picture falls into an abyss of idiocy when it tries to answer the "why?" question. With a premise like this, leaving a little mystery is often better than providing a nonsensical explanation. The ending requires a sleight of hand. Oh, and there's that damn dog.

The movie opens on a normal summer day in 1982. (The production leans heavily on markers to establish the era: clothing, music, TV references, car makes, etc.) The focus is on the nuclear Platt family—mother Denise (Anne Hathaway), father Greg (Ewan McGregor), daughter Audrey (Maisy Stella), and son Brian (Christian Convery)—who inhabit a house on the suburban road of Oak Street. Behind closed doors, however, things aren't perfect. Greg, who struggles with alcohol, has recently lost his job. Denise ruminates about divorcing him, and the implication is she's staying because of the kids. Audrey is morose and Brian is a troublemaker. Then, following a series of unexplained white lights at night, there are suddenly dinosaurs roaming the neighborhood, leaving mountains of poop in backyards, humping while leaning against houses, and eating residents for snacks.

There's a sense that David Robert Mitchell (whose It Follows was one of the best old-school horror movies of the 2010s) might have at some time had bigger fish to fry than the ones that end up in the pan. This could easily have been made into a six- or eight-part streaming series. Relationships that are only sketched out could have been fleshed out, and the mysteries underlying the dinosaurs' appearance could have been developed more credibly. Or, to put it another way, there is a deeper, more compelling narrative underlying the popcorn movie that unspools with a svelte 90-something minute running time.

If the objective is to just enjoy a dinosaur romp that doesn't send the main characters to an Isla Something-or-Other, this may scratch the itch. There's a little humor, a little pathos, and a lot of action crammed into the package. The special effects are quite good considering the sub-$100M budget, and the acting is better than one might imagine the story deserves. Although the headliners, Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, don’t do anything special, Maisy Stella (who was strong as the younger version of the lead character in My Old Ass) gives Audrey more nuance than her dialogue suggests. A sequence in which she quietly sits in a car and listens to Steve Winwood's "Valerie" on a cassette while her world crumbles around her is the film's most moving moment.

It's easy to imagine the high-concept pitch for this movie: What if a typical early-'80s neighborhood got moved back to prehistoric times and had to deal with dinosaurs trampling gardens and munching on residents? That's precisely what The End of Oak Street delivers, even if it doesn't bother much with the details. Although the film misuses science concepts like wormholes in its explanation, it's not too hard to ignore these missteps and focus instead on the monster movie aspects, which are consistently well-done and don't suddenly turn this group of humans into Marvel superheroes.

The concept of making medium-budget monster movies feels like something of a lost art. (They tend to be either cheap and cheesy or overblown and neutered.) The End of Oak Street shows that dinosaurs can still be a reliable means of wreaking havoc on a hapless group of human beings without making inordinate demands on the patience of an audience. The decision to present them in a less-showy manner and without much fanfare proves to be an effective framing choice. In a way, this is the anti-Jurassic Park of dinosaur movies: smaller, less ostentatious, and more fun than anything featuring a Spinosaurus or Velociraptor to grace the screen in the last 30-odd years.