I’m a big fan of indie writer-director David Robert Mitchell (It Follows, Under the Silver Lake). By contrast, I’ve never managed to warm up to director-producer J.J. Abrams, despite his tireless efforts to revive the movie magic of my childhood with sequels, remakes and Steven Spielberg throwbacks such as 2011’s Super 8. So, when I learned that Abrams’ company, Bad Robot, was producing Mitchell’s next movie, a creature feature about dinosaurs in suburbia, I was … curious. Abrams tends to lead viewers by the hand, recycling beloved tropes, while Mitchell’s style is rougher around the edges. How compatible are they?
The deal
It’s 1982, and life in suburbia isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Greg Platt (Ewan McGregor) doesn’t want to confess to his wife, Denise (Anne Hathaway), that he lost his job and is delivering pizza. Meanwhile, Denise details her many discontents in a novel she hasn’t told him about. They can’t afford to send their smart teenage daughter (Maisy Stella) to college, and their 13-year-old son (Christian Convery) keeps getting in trouble, as does his blue heeler, Starbuck.
After a freak storm related to solar flares, the Platts’ problems escalate to a new level. Venturing outside, they soon discover that their neighborhood has been transported back to the age of the dinosaurs. The air is soupy, a jungle has replaced the highway, and hungry pterodactyls and Allosauri are munching on their neighbors. Can this fractured family survive its new habitat — and perhaps find a way back?
Will you like it?
After seven Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies, there aren’t many forms of dinosaurs-in-the-modern-world chaos we haven’t already witnessed, thanks to CGI. But The End of Oak Street is a little grittier and meaner than those films, despite sharing their PG-13 rating. Rather than going for a Spielbergian sense of grand scale and wonder, Mitchell keeps his focus tightly on the Platts’ experience, and the film is scarier for it.
First, he builds a believable vintage suburban neighborhood with a naturalistic indie palette, much as he did in his lower-budget films It Follows and The Myth of the American Sleepover. Then, he and director of photography Mike Gioulakis use techniques such as split-focus diopter — which puts foreground and background in simultaneous focus — to create a subtle sense of something off in the familiar landscape.
Initially, the dinosaurs remain unseen or half seen, a haunted-house approach that Spielberg also used to great effect in the original Jurassic Park. Later, when they burst forth, they ramble the yards of Oak Street like more destructive raccoons. They don’t read as “monsters,” just critters going about their usual business; in one memorable scene, Greg and Denise even catch a couple of them in an intimate moment.
Far from competent dinosaur hunters, the family spends much of the movie flailing in shock or reacting impulsively — which makes sense, given that their situation is essentially a cruel joke. In another scene, a long shot allows us to watch in terrified anticipation as a predator sneaks up on the Platts. The lack of any sense of malicious intent — humans are the invasive species here, after all — only serves to remind us that nature is pretty damn scary.
Around the third act, The End of Oak Street takes a turn that is likely to divide audiences, cementing our sense that the film is more genuine horror than family adventure. Some viewers may feel like the movie is jumping the shark — or the pseudosuchian. Others may decide it’s finally hitting its stride.
But instead of leaning into that worst-case scenario, The End of Oak Street just … ends, after a few time-travel twists that seem designed to make the preceding mayhem more palatable. The characters’ arcs never reach satisfactory, organic conclusions. The abrupt plot resolution has potentially disturbing implications, but these remain unexplored (except by viewers in Reddit comment sections).
In short, the movie leaves us with a bit of whiplash. It offers the sort of wholesome messaging we expect from Abrams — dinosaurs can save your marriage! — alongside a graphic demonstration that if your neighborhood were transported back to the Cretaceous Period, you’d be dino food within a week. It’s great to see a filmmaker go whole hog on the primal fear of Jurassic Park, but the shrug of a conclusion doesn’t match the way the characters are fleshed out in the movie’s expansive first act.
It’s tempting but pointless to speculate on why The End of Oak Street seems to lack the courage of its convictions. All we can say for sure is that what remains is a weird, undeniably chilling little tale reminiscent of “The Twilight Zone.” Unlike the famous 1960 episode “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” (which its title recalls), The End of Oak Street has little to say about suburbia or the fragile nature of home. But it does reaffirm the age-old Hollywood principle that tidy 100-minute run times are good for business.
If you like this, try…
It Follows (2014; PLEX, Roku Channel, YouTube Primetime, rentable): If you liked the darker aspects of The End of Oak Street, don’t miss Mitchell’s breakout horror film about an unusual social disease.
The Mist (2007; Prime Video, YouTube Primetime): Or explore a still darker variation on the premise of a quiet community suddenly besieged by giant predators.
“Land of the Lost” (three seasons, 1974-1976; YouTube): A better choice for young kids who want to follow the adventures of a family time-warped into a dinosaur habitat might be Sid and Marty Krofft’s cult Saturday-morning series.
The original print version of this article was headlined “The End of Oak Street”
This article appears in August 19 • 2026.
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