The End of Oak Street Review

“This might be the most divisive film of the year.” Imagine your entire neighbourhood suddenly being ripped out of the 1980s and teleported 200 million years into the past. One second you're living a completely normal suburban life, and the next you're surrounded by dinosaurs with absolutely no idea how you're going to survive, let alone get home.

That's essentially the insane premise behind The End of Oak Street, and it's probably one of the most interesting concepts I've seen for a film this year. The problem is, I'm still not entirely sure what I think about it.

The End of Oak Street is going to be an incredibly divisive film. I've already seen people who absolutely love it, while others really don't connect with it at all. Unfortunately, I fall much closer to that second group. That doesn't mean I think it's a terrible movie. In fact, there are parts of this film that I really liked. It's just such a strange experience that I think it's going to completely depend on your personal taste.

The film follows a neighbourhood living in the 1980s when, without warning, a massive flash of light transports the entire area millions of years into the past. The residents quickly realise they're now sharing their neighbourhood with dinosaurs and have to work out not only how to survive, but whether there's any possible way of getting home.

It's such a ridiculous idea that you almost have to respect it. As the story progresses, mysterious portal-like orbs begin appearing and disappearing around them. The characters believe these wormhole-like objects could potentially be their way home, turning the story into this strange combination of survival movie, dinosaur film, science fiction and suburban family drama.

And when the film embraces that weirdness, there is definitely some charm to it. The biggest standout for me is easily the VFX. The dinosaurs look fantastic. There's an impressive level of detail throughout the film, and the visual effects team has done a brilliant job of making these creatures feel like they're actually occupying the same environment as the actors.

The decision to depict many of the dinosaurs with feathers also gives them a more scientifically informed appearance than the classic reptilian dinosaurs we're used to seeing in Hollywood. Whether you're completely sold on the film or not, it's difficult to deny how impressive these creatures look.

There are moments where I genuinely forgot I was looking at CGI. For a movie built around such an absurd premise, that's incredibly important. If the dinosaurs didn't work visually, the entire film would fall apart. Thankfully, they're probably one of the biggest reasons the movie works as well as it does.

The cast is also stacked. Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor and Maisie Williams are among the recognisable names involved, and with actors at that level, the performances were never going to be inherently bad. Everyone is good. The issue is that nobody really surprised me.

These are actors who know exactly what they're doing, and even when they're dealing with dialogue about their neighbourhood suddenly being surrounded by dinosaurs, they know how to make it believable enough to keep you invested. The dialogue itself is relatively natural considering how unnatural the situation is. There are obviously moments where characters have to explain completely ridiculous things, but the performances help sell it.

The pacing is also pretty consistent. I never felt like the film completely lost me or became painfully slow. It moves along steadily, introduces its ideas and continues escalating the survival situation. It's fine. And unfortunately, "fine" is probably the word I kept coming back to throughout most of this movie.

The direction is fine. The performances are fine. The dialogue is fine. The pacing is fine. There's nothing catastrophically wrong with it, but outside of the visual effects, there also wasn't much that really blew me away. One area that did actively pull me out of the movie was the cinematography.

Coming from a cinematography background myself, there were some choices here that I found really distracting. There are multiple uses of split diopter shots throughout the film, alongside some unusual camera positioning and framing choices. I'm normally all for filmmakers experimenting visually, but there were moments here where the cinematography became so noticeable that I stopped paying attention to what was actually happening in the scene.

A couple of shots genuinely made me laugh because of how strange the characters looked within the frame. That doesn't necessarily mean the cinematography is technically bad. Some viewers might actually love how unusual it is. But for me, there were several moments where the camera became a distraction rather than something helping tell the story.

And that basically sums up my relationship with The End of Oak Street. I can understand why someone else might love the exact things I didn't. This feels like an acquired taste. It's weird, it's ambitious, it's occasionally charming and it completely commits to a premise that sounds like somebody came up with it at 2am and somehow convinced a studio to actually make it.

There's something admirable about that. I also struggled to work out exactly what the film was trying to say underneath everything. There's obviously an element of family and relationships, and you could potentially pull something out of the story about trusting your partner and sticking together when everything around you completely falls apart.

But I never walked away feeling like there was some major underlying theme I needed to unpack. Sometimes it's simply a movie about people from the 1980s trying not to get eaten by dinosaurs. And maybe that's enough. One thing that absolutely works, though, is Michael Giacchino's score.

Giacchino is one of those composers who just seems to understand exactly what a movie needs musically. His score adds scale and emotion to a story that could very easily have become completely ridiculous. It's another element of the film that helps sell the adventure and gives some of the bigger sequences the energy they need.

The ending is where I think the film slightly overstays its welcome. Without spoiling anything, I think the movie could have ended about ten minutes earlier. The actual ending isn't bad. I think most audiences will be reasonably satisfied with where the characters end up and how things are resolved. I just felt like the film kept trying to make its conclusion bigger when it didn't necessarily need to.

A more restrained ending might have worked better for me. But this is also why I'm finding The End of Oak Street so difficult to score. I didn't hate it. I wasn't sitting there desperate for it to finish. There are entertaining moments, the dinosaurs look incredible, the performances are solid and Giacchino delivers another great score.

But would I watch it again? Probably not. And that's ultimately what separates a movie I think is good from something that, for me, lands somewhere in the middle. I can completely understand someone watching The End of Oak Street and loving it. If its particular brand of weirdness works for you, I think you could have an absolute blast with this movie.

So if you love it, great. Film is subjective, and this feels like one of those movies where two people can watch exactly the same thing and walk out having had completely different experiences. For me, though, the incredible VFX and strong cast weren't enough to overcome some strange creative choices and a story that never quite grabbed me beyond its fantastic initial premise. The End of Oak Street is weird, ambitious and undeniably unique. I just don't think it was for me.