irected By David Robert Mitchell

Starring – Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella

The Plot – The Platt family (Hathaway, McGregor, Stella, Christian Convery) bands together to navigate their new surroundings after a cosmic event transports their suburban neighborhood to someplace unknown.

Rated PG-13 for some strong violent content, bloody images, some strong adult language and suggestive material.

The End of Oak Street | Official Trailer

POSITIVES

Regardless of the lack of financial success and critical acclaim that was promised after a game-changing directorial debut in 2015’s It Follows, David Robert Mitchell will always be one of those storytellers whom I eagerly anticipate their next project, and with The End of Oak Street bringing teeth back to the dinosaur subgenre, that curiosity is paid off tenfold throughout a heartily entertaining and adult-oriented engagement full of rampant intensity, surmising one of the biggest cinematic surprises in a summer full of popcorn thrills. Mitchell’s interpretive knowledge seems to be his single greatest advantage on his execution towards the film, not only in that he like his audience, has sat through an abundance of underwhelming dinosaur flicks, over the last twenty-five years, with limitless knowledge on what to stay away from, but also in the insightful idea that characters make the conflict, allowing audiences a firmly unwavering empathetic investment towards these characters, as a result of thickly dramatic familial themes resonant of a broken home between them. While deposited time is a virtue in a movie that maintains urgency throughout a 94-minute runtime, Mitchell responsibly takes the entirety of his opening act to flesh out value in the outlining of these quartet of characters, tapping into the extent of their household instability in order to appraise deeper meaning to the air of their dynamics, and while this has the audience waiting more patiently than expected for the dinosaurs they so obviously paid for to appear, it does give us a greater sense of backstory knowledge on them and the reception of the surrounding neighborhood, a benefit made immersive with the subtly effective production values of the film naturally emulating a believability to the intended 1982 setting. As I’ve said before, when costumes and set designs work seamlessly alongside each other, it crafts a timeless appeal that doesn’t require heavy-handedness or fore-frontal framing to make the gimmick feel distracting, and with so many of the visuals here enacting a textural and societal vividness for accuracy, it keeps the definition firmly attainable in each and every frame, without the need to trivialize it with flashy colors and abrasive soundtrack choices that have subscribed them to style over substance. In fact, the film so seamlessly feels plucked from the 80’s that Mitchell enacts all of the wonderous sensibilities and underlining edginess of an Amblin Pictures film of the same time frame, where even in the confines of a PG-13 rating, the desire for gruesome brutality and suspenseful urgency throughout sequences of plunging peril have zero problems surmising unforeseen stakes and necessary consequences on the overheads of these characters, making their viscous predatory adversaries feel all the more dangerously unrelenting in the family’s isolated detachment from society. Part of the meticulous precision of this thick atmospheric dread certainly resonates as a result of Mitchell’s uncompromising limiting of pallet-cleansing humor throughout the engagement, in order to appraise compromising levity to sequences so overwhelmed by captivating intensity, instead allowing the tone of the material to remain consistently dire throughout, even as the family draws closer by their bonding commonality. However, just as many demanded praises should be paid to Michael Giacchino’s boisterously busy compositions throughout thunderously string-stirring instruments, gifting accelerating wings to chase sequences already energized with stomach-churning velocity, without any two themes feeling persistently repetitious of one another. Considering Giacchino is already having a remarkable year by scoring the biggest movie of the summer, in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the predictable dependency of his follow up here is nothing short of breathtakingly frantic, particularly in the expressive outlining of influential elements that help him to audibly contextualize so much of the cluttered chaos of each frame, where dinosaur squawking and sensitively distorted sound mixing in character hearing clue us into the depths of their despair, and though it’s intentionally not as epic or triumphant as some of Michael’s previous work in the superhero subgenre, the helming allows him the necessary molding of emotional elasticity to make each additional scene bolder than the previous, building towards a confrontational edge-of-your-seat climax made irresistibly endearing by Giacchino’s flourished frenzy, cementing more spine-tingling work by one of the very best composers currently working in the industry. On top of all of this, Mitchell and cinematographer Michael Gioulakis combine to conjure commanding techniques to such eye-fetching visuals, particularly those borrowed from It Follows, which transpire so transfixingly authentic with a dinosaur film that elicits many of the same tangibles as a horror movie. While Mitchell’s biggest risk comes in the form of a manufactured split-diopter lens, rather than standard digital split-screen framing, in order to convey two characters simultaneously in frame at varying distances from one another, for my money, the most compelling choices spawn from slow-lingering panning that zero in on something speculated upon in the distance, as well as single frame long takes that draw out the suspense of an inevitable confrontation that only we the audience are privy towards, in turn helping to cement this unmistakable visual identity for Mitchell that in turn renders a lot of advantageous angling for the viewer, even if the elements of jump-scare surprises are mostly traded in for the disquieting fear of the forth-coming inevitable. Last but certainly not least, the performances from all four of the family protagonists help to elevate the material, particularly that of Anne Hathaway and Christian Convery, who each humble with such believably wrenching work that unlocks some much-needed humanity to their respective roles. Hathaway’s unblemished commitment here earnestly articulates a woman on the brink of completely unraveling, with a meaningful combination of bulging eyes and manic panic that not only help sell the terrifying circumstances of the desolately dire situation before her, but also Hathaway’s gifted ability to naturally deviate from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other during tensely vulnerable conversations. Convery supports Hathaway’s herculean efforts with a detection of timid vulnerability and wrenching fright that gave way to a stoically battle-tested evolution throughout the movie’s duration, all alongside some sentimentally stirring sequences that he capitalizes with a river of tears and hysteria that always met the physical challenge at eye level.

NEGATIVES

While The End of Oak Street is a good movie full of nostalgic nourishment for the kinds of adventure films audiences grew up adoring, it’s far from a great one on account of some remarkably illogical choices made during its third act climax, which threaten to squander all of the aforementioned momentum materialized from a fully realized production and prominent performances. Simply put, when the script is forced to answer some of these questions created from such a surreal concept, it nearly sinks under the weight of expectations, with casual glossing over that feels irresponsible, as well as a bit insulting to the audience, and when you factor in an overly sloppy ending that feels like a studio re-write executed with a fast-forward button, it requires a bit more suspension of disbelief than even deemed necessary in a popcorn dinosaur flick, leaving my lasting impressions of the movie a bit detracted by the neat and tidy convenience of a resolution that makes the movie feel like it ran out of time and film during the defining moments when it teased something bigger and bolder. Logic isn’t just confined to the ending, however, as so many moments giving way to chase between the dinosaurs and the characters require the latter to overlook the influential heft of these gigantic characters whenever they’re moving towards them, resulting in them surprised by the air of their spontaneous attacks, which were a bit too unbelievable for me to go along with. As previously applauded, Mitchell is wise enough to stay away from most of the catatonic cliches and hinderances that take away enjoyment and investment from so many of the Jurassic World movies, but his incapability to construct confrontations without audibly echoed influences ringing unavoidably with its characters brings unpleasant flashbacks to this engagement, in turn condemning the relatability of its characters with idiotic naive perception that makes them deserving of death if something as massive as dinosaurs are able to constantly sneak their way into the sanctity of their safe zones. Last but certainly not least, while the movie’s C.G-heavy special effects aren’t anywhere near the worst that I’ve seen, in terms of motion and detectable influence, the thoroughly documented reshoots of post-production do feel fairly evident during the movie’s opening act, where a couple of sedated scenes involving McGregor during a neighborhood BBQ flourish this glaringly lifeless backdrop so artificial that you can practically see the greenscreen from which they spawned from. It’s fortunately something that only persists during the opening act, but it does appraise this uncanny valley influence over initial interpretations of the presentation, which supplant feelings of pessimistic skepticism for what’s to follow, leaving those ice-breaking moments hollow by humiliating backdrops that play all the more transparently on the big screen.

OVERALL
The End of Oak Street is an intensely wild and emotionally riveting kind of Spielberg actioneer that supplants some much-needed situational stakes to the long missing uninspired dinosaur subgenre, prescribing the kind of crowd-pleasing carefree summer cinema that recaptures the immortality of imagination. While the film’s quality takes a noticeable nosedive during a third act with more questions than answers, it’s held together by the heartstrings of a fabulous foursome breathing life into a family dynamic, in turn appraising heart and humanity to an otherworldly block party of pervasive terror.

My Grade: 7.7 or B