My quick rating - 6.6/10. The End of Oak Street starts with idyllic shots of a wholesome little town, complete with a bustling crowd, pleasant music, and the kind of neighborhood atmosphere that tells you these people are about to have a really friggin' bad day. We even get a family sack race going on for a neighborhood block party, because nothing says “everything is normal” quite like adults willingly jumping around inside burlap bags.
At the center are Greg (Ewan McGregor) and Denise Platt (Anne Hathaway). I have always been a fan of Hathaway, and I haven't had the chance to review her since her 2023 turn in Eileen. We get a decent amount of time to get acquainted with the neighborhood dynamic, including who likes who, who doesn't, and which neighbors are apparently keeping a running mental spreadsheet of everyone's backyard activities.
Their son Brian (Christian Convery) reports seeing a weird light overnight, while daughter Audrey (Maisy Stella) rounds out the Platt family. Their neighbor Mel (P.J. Byrne) also drops by to accuse the kids of leaving a pile of shit in his backyard. And yes, there is some comedy to be had here. Nothing like an unexplained cosmic event to really put your neighbor's fecal complaints into perspective.
After a mysterious cosmic event rips Oak Street out of suburbia and transports the neighborhood to someplace unknown, the Platt family soon discovers that their survival depends on sticking together while navigating their now completely unrecognizable surroundings.
The movie gives us a few subtle strange occurrences before eventually going full-on WTF. Since Audrey was caught listening to Steve Winwood - Valerie in the garage, I'm guessing the setting is around 1982, and we get plenty of early-'80s music throughout.
Then we get dinosaurs. And not just dinosaurs existing. We get a couple of dinosaurs going at it. Well, dinosaur style, LOL. Naturally, someone needs to take a picture with them in the background because apparently the instinct to document stupid shit for posterity survives even the collapse of reality.
The premise is silly. There are logical jumps that are silly on purpose. But the movie understands that and leans into the absurdity rather than trying to convince us this is some airtight piece of science fiction. The artfulness comes from managing to do that without turning the whole thing into a boring, campy Jurassic ripoff.
The End of Oak Street very much feels like an '80s action-adventure flick. Everything looks great, and visually it nails that era. If you dropped this into a theater in 1988, I could absolutely see it being a smash hit. One scene even got a bit violent, which surprised me.
Unfortunately, David Robert Mitchell gets a little too determined to stick the landing, and that forced ending held me back from going higher. I was perfectly happy riding along with the movie's increasingly ridiculous bullshit, and then it felt like Mitchell decided I needed a formal explanation for the bullshit I'd just watched.
There is also no hiding the influence of The Twilight Zone, particularly classic time-travel and suburban-disruption episodes like "The Odyssey of Flight 33" and "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street." The movie wears that influence pretty openly, from the suburban normalcy to the sudden “what the fuck is happening?” shift.
Everything looks fantastic, the '80s vibe works, and the absurdity is surprisingly entertaining.
Terrible time for me to be binging Twilight Zone, though, because I'm starting to notice just how clearly that show has influenced an alarming number of modern movies.
https://jackmeat.com/the-end-of-oak-street-2026/
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