The End of Oak Street
Stranger Things keep happening at the cinema, this time with an engagingly Spielbergian lick. It’s fun.
Jurassic ‘burbs: Anne Hathaway and Rexy
Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
It’s a particularly sticky summer’s day. The sun is shining and there’s a humid, stifling atmosphere in the Platt family’s friendly suburban neighbourhood. There’s Mom (Anne Hathaway) and Dad (Ewan McGregor), their astronomically preoccupied daughter Audrey, son Brian (a target of local bullies) and, of course, the dog, Starbuck. From the outside, buoyed by Michael Giacchino’s cheery score, everything seems picture-perfect, as we have so often witnessed in the Spielbergian suburbs of the early 1980s. In fact, here the year is 1982, Pat Benatar and Jefferson Starship are on the soundtrack and Mom, Denise Platt (Hathaway), is taking Polaroid snaps to record the memory of a particularly jolly street party with the neighbours. Of course, life only looks this good in old Polaroids and the cracks in the marriage, Greg Platt’s secret drinking and Audrey’s unsustainable dreams of getting into Cornell University are things to be brushed under the carpet.
Steeped in nostalgia and a sense of rather forced, artificial bonhomie, The End of Oak Street is a generous slice of homage to Spielberg and Stephen King and – if you know your cinematographic history – the American filmmaker John Frankenheimer. Hathaway and McGregor never really click as a real-life couple (the latter often feels like he’s reciting his lines), and many of the set-ups feel pre-packaged. But this is the sort of hokum that doesn’t really take Stanislavski's Method that seriously and is more intent on entertaining as wide a demographic as possible.
There’s no secret that The End of Oak Street is a monster movie, as the distributor has plonked the face of a dinosaur on the poster. In fact, the film’s early stages virtually mirror the new Netflix thriller The Last House: a nuclear American family finding themselves trapped in their house as unseen forces prowl without – even if Greta Lee and Wagner Moura are more believable under the strained circumstances. Where the director David Robert Mitchell (It Follows) succeeds here is with the extremely suspenseful scenes of reptilian attack, prompting one to question the leniency of the 12A certificate in the UK (this critic was shocked to see eight-year-old girls skipping out of the cinema in palpable relief). Much of the movie is harder to believe than to stomach, as the overall tone recalls the largely harmless monster movies caught snapping on 1950s’ black-and-white TV screens. While the film’s first third holds our interest thanks to the WTF? factor, the last third is a genuine nerve shredder. As for the narrative explanation of the collision of portals and wormholes, well, we will have to take that on trust. The art is to just enjoy the ride and to put one’s critical faculties to one side.
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella, Christian Convery, Jordan Alexa Davis, P.J. Byrne, Emily Kuroda, Hudson Meek, Anne Gee Byrd.
Dir David Robert Mitchell, Pro J.J. Abrams, Hannah Minghella, Jon Cohen, David Robert Mitchell, Matt Jackson and Tommy Harper, Screenplay David Robert Mitchell, Ph Michael Gioulakis, Pro Des Maya Shimoguchi, Ed John Axelrad, Music Michael Giacchino, Costumes Erin Benach, Sound Paula Fairfield, Dialect coach Liz Himelstein.
Bad Robot/Jackson Pictures-Warner Bros.
99 mins. USA. 2026. UK and US Rel: 14 August 2026. Cert. 12A.
