The monsters were found on Maple Street, and they looked just like you and I. On Oak Street, the “monsters” are of this world, but from a much earlier time. In 1982, the Platt family, mother Denise (Anne Hathaway), father Greg (Ewan McGregor), daughter Audrey (Maisy Stella), son Brian (Christian Conway), and dog Starbuck reside on Oak Street, an idyllic suburbia where the neighbors know each other, hold block parties, and the like. From the outside, the Platt family looks perfect. But Denise and Greg are having marital strife that the kids are picking up on, and the kids themselves have normal teen problems they’re trying to work through.

Weird things are happening in the neighborhood. A neighbor has growing plant life that she has no idea how it got there, later identified to be an extinct species. Quick but intense periods of white light come and go close to midnight, and one, occurring during a storm, knocks out all power. The next morning is when the rubicon is crossed. Actual dinosaurs are walking amongst the denizens, and not all are herbivores. Not only may this signal The End of Oak Street, it may signal the end of humanity.

Clocking in at just under 100 minutes, The End of Oak Street is a movie so gleefully inspired by Steven Spielberg (along with other late 70’s/early 80’s works) and his early directed adventures across science fiction, thriller, and adventure genres. With a career locked into smaller, lower scale films, director and writer David Robert Mitchell (It Follows, Under the Silver Lake) takes on helming this one which carries a vastly larger budget than anything he’s done before. That said, at an estimated $80-90 million, the reported budget is smaller on the scale of blockbusters and has to be used somewhat creatively to exhibit enough scale without appearing limited.

Mitchell gets around this by waiting until absolutely necessary to reveal his prehistoric entities in full, which creates mystique. Being contained to a single neighborhood ratchets up the tension/fear factor, as the director makes it clear once the dinos are introduced that these can be ferocious adversaries. An amazing moment highlighting the diegetic sound of a massive titanoboa only lasts for about 30 seconds yet registers high on the scare scale. The CGI itself isn’t S-tier, but it never actively detracts from the experience.

The End of Oak Street is rather brutal for a PG-13 rating, in line with something like Kong: Skull Island. There’s a suddenness with its violence, even amid the wide shots Mitchell uses to show the neighborhood’s escalating chaos. One specific happening caught most of my entire showing by surprise, considering it immediately comes after a sequence that can be argued is played for laughs. Outside of the violence, the filming of conversations using the split diopter is a stylistic choice reminiscent of Spielberg’s works and other New Hollywood filmmakers like Brian de Palma.

Once The End of Oak Street gets going, it’s a mostly well-paced ride that delivers on its mission to showcase some dinosaurs hungry for human meat. However, the first 20 minutes or so do not do the best job of creating compelling characters or meaningful relationships. Mitchell throws in marital strife, a bullying conflict for Brian that bubbles and resolves in the oddest of ways, and a clunky young love romantic angle. Honestly, save for Hathaway’s Denise, I didn’t care much for whether the main characters survived or perished, particularly Brian who doubles as one of the more annoying and unbelievably helpless teenagers present on screen in some time. The disparate tones (part comedy, part family adventure, part horror) add to the overall indifference. Overall, the film gives a passable surface explanation in explaining the what of the situation, but wisely avoids the machinations of the how, which is probably for the best.

The 2026 ubiquity of Hathaway continues. Her work here will not land in the upper tier of her filmography, though she’s a very able lead who does her best to sell the family drama and capably handles the action. McGregor feels like he’s in a different film, trying his best at an American accent but failing kind of hilariously.

Whether it’s sharks, alligators, or dinosaurs, every summer has room for a non-demanding, big screen creature feature that doesn’t overstay its welcome. For 2026, that movie is The End of Oak Street. If lean and mean counterprogramming is needed after repeated viewings of The Odyssey and Spider Man: Brand New Day, it’s a good choice.

B-

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