FILM REVIEW: The End of Oak Street Starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor

Pick a Lane

The End of Oak Street wants the best of both worlds, both literally and thematically. In the story’s world, a family gets thrown back millions of years to survive alongside dinosaurs. In the theme’s world, it is a battle of optimism vs. pessimism when the world throws the craziest curveballs. These two worlds want so badly to co-exist with each other. A surprising side takes the lead, propelling the narrative into ridiculous territory that not even the leads can salvage.

The film, directed by It Follows leader David Robert Mitchell, has so much to say about how different genders react to the world around them. Decisions are made that emphatically point in a certain direction, and then it feels like the rug is pulled from right underneath us in another. The audience gets a sense that it is being split into two beings and purposefully rams those two beings against one another. What makes the film really shine in the first two-thirds is what ultimately makes the third piece of the story feel unsatisfying.

Annie Get Your Gun

The central thematic conflict shines brightest in Denise Platt (an always-game Anne Hathaway), a wanna-be writer who feels constrained by the nuclear family life she lives. She and her husband Greg (a naive, yet optimistic Ewan McGregor) have secrets of their own before their family is upended to a past roaming with dinosaurs. As their new reality begins to set in on them and their two kids Brian and Audrey (Christian Convery and Maisy Stella, respectively), their own values come in to question.

First, we are introduced to this new timeline in the form of Jaws-like sequences that successfully get under the skin. After almost coming face-to-face with death on their own, the Platt family sits in their living room discussing their chances of survival. The men of the family blindly believe that all will be okay. The women see the reality for what it is: scary and REAL. The women frankly have the better argument, highlighting some points of the film very acutely.

The film continues to take us on a fun ride, leading to one of the biggest gasps I have heard in the cinema in recent memory. Good! Later, it yanks that decision back for softer landing. Not good! The themes of the first portion of the film are thrown out the window in favor of a new course that feels less paved, let alone scenic. The fun of the film becomes a chore for us and the actors.

Is This The End?

A main reason this film has (fatigued) legs for the most part is the Visual Effects from Jay Cooper and Keith Anthony-Brown. Similar to their previous collaboration The Creator, even great visual effects can only do so much when the screenplay wants to end the story by any means necessary. A nice moment in the beginning with a dinosaur we cannot see and a fence we can is undercut by an ending that spells random plot points out while leaving others to the dust.

The film clearly is pointing out previous Spielberg-esque films such as E.T., Gremlins, and even Jurassic Park. It takes darker turns, which add more depth to characters that could have been throwaways from the start. This includes the beginning exposition moments before the Inciting Incident. The atmosphere does not feel like one we want to go back to. Much like Mitchell’s It Follows, there is something deeply imbedded in the culture of this neighborhood we cannot quite put a finger on. Unfortunately, that tone shifts back to something else entirely by the end, leaving a trail of bad taste on our senses.

The End of Oak Street feels like it does everything and nothing during its runtime. Our current culture yearns for fun, unique stories like this. I believe the film knows about that yearning. The studio also seems to want to placate an audience into an ending that manipulates us into maybe wanting more. The Platt family certainly does not want to relive what they go through again. Why should we?