REVIEW:
The End of Oak Street was a fun and exciting movie. Produced by JJ Abrahms, this movie felt like a perfect cross over between Abrahms sci-fi based movies, (Super 8, Cloverfield – produced by,) and M Night Shamalan’s better mystery movies (Unbreakable, Signs.) That is to say, it felt a bit like a Twilight Zone, strange signs popping up everywhere, without a clear notion of what they mean, kind of thing. That was how the first half worked, anyway, as the movie took its time to build up suspense and relationships.
The second half was all the dinosaur / time travel material, and that actually worked as well. Very nicely. This is probably the best dinosaur movie since the first Jurassic Park, back in 1993. And that’a not to say that this movie is flawless by any means (like that movie was,) but just that the dinosaurs actually look and feel real. They are CGI creations, of course (even that movie used quite a bit of CGI,) but they don’t feel like they exist here just to attack and give us instant thrills. Instead, these dinosaurs feel like they are really there, in a suburban neighborhood, doing dinosaur things. That might be as simple as sleeping in the middle of the street. And it is certainly not always, non-stop attacking. The movie gives its dinosaurs time to breathe.
The same can be said about the characters. Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor play Denise and Greg, and they are both remarkably believable in the roles. Greg is an easy-going, laid back guy who tries to relate and maintain a sort of friendship with his kids. Especially his son. Denise, on the other hand, focusses on the big picture such as teaching their kids good values. The two of them do clash, and there is talk of possible divorce. A little more screen time with these characters in their relationships might have been helpful, but the short run time (this movie comes in at an hour and forty minutes,) is definitely nice for maintaining the excitement.
After all of the clues are uncovered, such as a mysterious plant that grows almost instantly in a neighbors back yard, or a large pile of animal dung that is found in another neighbor’s yard, the actual dinosaurs show up. No reason or explanation why. And that’s okay. That’s what the mystery is all about. There are so many great dinosaur scenes here, too many to count. And there is actual death. The movie isn’t afraid to kill off characters, or make everyone have a narrow, ex-machina escape.
Now one thing that is missing is any sort of meeting or discussion among the neighbors. One can make the argument that there’s just no time, with everyone running for their lives, or boarding up their houses, but at some point you would think that one neighbor would call over his backyard fence, or shout across the street, or find some way to talk to another neighbor about what was happening. Instead, neighbors are pretty much kept in the background here, as the movie focusses almost entirely on the four character family, as they try to survive together.
The other thing that doesn’t quite work is the ending. There’s no way to discuss it without getting into spoilers, so let’s just say it involves taking a character out of one timeline and putting him / her into another. Only to do this, there are many problems that the movie doesn’t really address. Like what does it do to the family that loses the character from their timeline. It’s very convoluted. That being said, it’s not a bad ending, in that it does accomplish a very specific goal that the characters are trying to do, and ends the movie on a happy note. It’s just not on the same level as the rest of the movie. The End of Oak Street is generally a pretty interesting and unusual movie.