David Robert Mitchell’s “The End of Oak Street” is perhaps the greatest modern example of why Amblin-style movies of the 1980’s became indelible classics. Whereas many of his peers have attempted their own takes on the age-old formula of “E.T.”, “Back To The Future”, or “The Goonies”, films and TV shows that are overly slavish to tinkling scores, softly lit 1980’s iconography, and plucky kids riding bikes toward some supernatural adventure; Mitchell decides to zag, to burrow deeper into the cavernous souls of normal people, with normal problems, catapulted into a fantastical world. What Mitchell seems to understand is that the wholesome memories we hold for the movies of forty years ago are just that: memories, often warped through the haze of nostalgia into something easily digestible and merchandisable, a comfort with soft corners that goes down smooth. Yet, is that really the case with the movies themselves? “E.T.” is, in many ways, a terribly sad film. Elliott is a lonely kid, languishing in the fallout of his parents’ divorce, who finds something extraordinary in the little Reese’s Pieces-loving alien only to lose him to circumstance. I mean, that’s life, kid, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. The film is loving, tear-jerking, and sweet, but it most certainly is not a barrel of laughs; there are even sequences of horror and grotesquerie, like finding pale E.T. lying near death in a culvert. Mitchell, the director of the horror classic “It Follows”, seems well aware that the languages of wonder and terror rhyme more than they clash, that the treacly strings of a John Williams-style score often runs interference for the dangers lurking just beyond your field of vision, and that a true coming-of-age story is about facing tragedy and soldiering forward anyway; even when that tragedy just so happens to include dinosaurs and time travel.
“The End of Oak Street” follows a traditional nuclear family called The Pratts, one that would be well at home in any quirky 80’s movie: Denise (Anne Hathaway), Greg (Ewan McGregor), along with the kids Audrey (Maisey Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery), and dog Starbuck. While they smile and laugh along with neighbors at a block party, cracks have developed beneath the foundation of this happy home. Denise and Greg are struggling, nearing a separation that they can’t seem to actually talk about, while the kids watch as the slow disintegration of their family happens in real time. There is no infidelity, but there are secrets. Denise spends her evenings writing a novel that touches on her own fears and dreams of independence while Greg retreats to shifts as a pizza delivery driver when not sneaking sips of whiskey to take the edge off. They want things to work; they love their lives, but an escape hatch seems just beyond the horizon, soon to overtake them if something doesn’t change soon. And something does change. First there are odd occurrences, like a prehistoric plant showing up in a neighbor’s yard, or a Volkswagen-sized pile of poop landing in another’s. These are odd happenstances but easily shrugged off amid the hustle and bustle of daily life. But when a mysterious light overtakes their entire neighborhood, the Pratts wake up to find that their power is out, their water has shut down, the temperature has seemingly risen to tropical levels, and there are dinosaurs rampaging through their neighborhood. By some metaphysical malevolence, their entire community has been time-traveled back several million years and has landed smack in the middle of a hot springs-laden Jurassic jungle. As neighbors begin to be picked off by velociraptors and slug-like mega-snakes, the Pratts are forced to contend with their conundrum as a family, though they bring with them the anxieties and stressors of their old world along with them. While their marriage was surely near extinction, Denise and Greg must force themselves to bridge the gap that has grown between them before they, and their kids, end up becoming dino dinner.
It’s almost a shame that “The End of Oak Street’s” marketing had to give up the dinosaur twist, as it is a lovely reveal around the end of the first act of the film. Much care is taken to enmesh audiences in the lives of The Pratts, and to fall in love with each of them in their own way. It’s clear they are going through a struggle, looking for distractions, but hoping that some force beyond their comprehension might help them come together again. When the family is zapped into the past, their discovery of where and when they are is slow and methodical, forcing them to uncover their predicament in the spilled blood left behind by their slain friends. Mitchell might be playing in a more wholesome sandbox here than in his previous films, but he seems giddy to every piece of his horror repertoire. It’s borderline trite to say that this is the best dinosaur movie since “Jurassic Park”, yet there are sequences of pulse-pounding action that had me leaping out of my seat, cringing, crying out, and gasping. Whereas Spielberg allowed for a fair amount of awe to seep through into his dinosaur horror film, just think of Sam Neil staring slack-jawed at the Brachiosauruses; Mitchell takes a more nuanced and punishing approach, placing humans firmly at the bottom of the food chain where one false move will get you killed. These dinosaurs aren’t cute. They’re not your friend or meant to go on a t-shirt; they’re furry, feathered, gnarly, and hungry. Part of the film’s effectiveness is in its insistence that anyone can die at any time, leaving those left behind to try and find some purpose in going on when all hope, all future, is assuredly lost. That Mitchell somehow dives so deeply into the pits of despair while retaining the playful sense of a dinosaur-laden romp is a testament to his skills as a filmmaker; and to the deft, almost imperceptible, skill of his exceptional cast.
The best scene in the movie has literally nothing to do with dinosaurs. It features The Pratts sitting around the living room, trying to comprehend what has just happened to them. Hathaway, as the pragmatic Denise, tries to explain to her kids the only logical explanation: that their community has been moved to a far-off time and they must figure out a way to survive in this new normal. McGregor’s Greg, however, seems unable to accept the harsh reality they are in; blindly believing that they will be saved because “God wouldn’t let this happen to them”. The STEM-obsessed Audrey doesn’t buy it, but the younger, more hopeful Brian does; believing his father because the alternative sounds much more dire. Denise pulls Greg aside, and the pair finally square off in a confrontation that has been months, and several millennia, in the making. Their argument turns into a screaming match, their voices echoing through the small dark house, but we do not linger with them. We, instead, see into the rooms of the children; forced to listen as they realize that the dark, unspoken rift in their family has somehow followed them here. Audrey sits against her door crying while Brian tries to drown out the yelling with the last vestiges of battery in his Walkman. There is an adage that the best horror movies are the ones where you could take the supernatural element out and the movie is still dramatically effective, and “The End of Oak Street” exemplifies this with aplomb. The dinosaurs are irrelevant here; the lives of each individual are less important than the survival of the family. This unit is an ecosystem all its own that is meant to withstand anything; till death do us part. In this sequence, the greatest threat to this family is not the outside world but the internal one, the unspoken resentments and fears that have grown gargantuan and have finally been unleashed on an alien world. That this film takes the time to settle into this discomfort, to allow us to feel the seams splitting at the worst possible time, makes us care for each member of this family all the more. We want them to survive not because they are characters on a screen but because they are us; they are weak-willed, impulsive, selfish, and needy. Yet, the worst of them is not the most of them, and they are given the chance to prove that as the film’s climax looms. The thing we loved about those old Amblin movies was not the platitudes or the sugary sweets, but the honesty, the crunchy parts of human nature laid out before us amid metaphysical chaos. Cinema, at its best and most lingering, is meant to be a mirror that helps us see, learn, understand ourselves more intimately. “The End of Oak Street” accomplishes this with plenty of dinosaur gore to help the medicine go down; as fine a time at the movies as I could possibly imagine.
“The End of Oak Street” is a fantastic piece of moviemaking; thrilling, scary, emotional, and complicated, a story that treats its central family, both young and old, as people who make mistakes even if they always mean well. I found myself crying more than once as this family bonds, breaks apart, and reforms before our eyes; guided by an unyielding devotion for one another that reaches well beyond their petty squabbles. There are bigger fish to fry in this world than our unspoken grievances, and death comes not with a roar but a whisper; snatching away the time that never was and could have been. As the Pratt family learns, and perhaps we could do well to remember, love doesn’t end, even when the world does; it finds a way, just so long as you’re willing to fight for it.
Visit Oak Street.
You’ll be glad you did.
“The End of Oak Street” is playing at The Broad Theater and Prytania Theatres at Canal Place.
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