Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: David Robert Mitchell
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella, Christian Convery, Jordan Alexa Davis, PJ Byrne, Chris Coy
Many a movie has brought something terrifying to a previously idyllic American suburb. With The End of Oak Street, writer/director David Robert Mitchell flips this idea on its head. He takes a pizza-shaped chunk of a 1982 suburb and transplants it back to prehistoric times, with all the terror that entails.
Mitchell's movie is set in that year not only to avoid the storytelling inconveniences of the internet and cellphones, but also to mine nostalgia for the classic Spielberg era. 1982 was the year of E.T. and Poltergeist, two movies that are heavily channelled here. Mitchell takes the familial discontent of the former and drops it into the suburban setting of the latter. The film takes place in a valley that is practically identical to the location of Poltergeist, and divorce looms in the background.
Mitchell tees his protagonists, an everyday suburban family, up nicely. Denise (Anne Hathaway) is growing unhappy in her marriage to manchild Greg (Ewan McGregor). She has intellectual aspirations that he can't satisfy, and she secretly writes a novel in the basement. Greg has his own secret. He has lost his job and has been secretly delivering pizza in the evening (he doesn't make much effort to hide out, literally parking his car in the driveway with a massive pizza sign still attached). Like her mother, teenage daughter Audrey (Maisy Stella) craves intellectual stimulation and can't wait to leave her small-minded suburb for college. Youngest child Brian (Christian Convery) has a crush on Jeanette (Jordan Alexa Davis), the new girl next door.
Once the family find that their slice of suburbia has somehow been transported back to prehistoric times, this setup falls by the wayside. Mom and Dad don't have time to confront their problems in any meaningful way, because, you know...dinosaurs. Audrey never gets a chance to display her scientific ingenuity in the way you might imagine (after her impressive breakout turn in My Old Ass, it's disappointing to see Stella relegated to such a nothing character here). Brian and Jeanette barely speak.
But you're not here for the humans, are you? As a dinosaur movie it's better than at least four Jurassic Park sequels. It's no surprise that the director of It Follows knows how to build tension and suspense, and the movie's first act brilliantly lays breadcrumbs that gradually build to the main event unleashing of dino mayhem. Mitchell appears heavily influenced by Hitchcock's The Birds in this opening act, ingratiating us to a nondescript corner of America before letting loose a flock of killer creatures. When the dinosaurs attack it's surprisingly vicious, though there are missed opportunities for a couple of villainous characters to receive a satisfying comeuppance. Mitchell knows how to build a scene - there is one sequence involving a giant snake that even Spielberg would have to applaud.
When the dinosaurs are doing their thing, The End of Oak Street delivers thrills. But for most of the middle section there is an odd lack of urgency. The central characters spend this portion strolling around their curiously under-populated suburb (they seem to be the only family here that owns a dog), causing us to ask where the dinos have disappeared to? The tallest building here is a two-storey home, so how can these massive creatures hide? The dinosaurs only turn up when it's convenient for the plot, and as anyone who owns a cat will tell you, that's just not how animals do things. After a cracking opening, it's not until the final half hour that the movie picks up the pace again, prompted by an admittedly shocking turn.
Mitchell's film might be better than most of Jurassic Park's sequels but like those movies it can't help but feel somewhat redundant. It got me thinking about how I felt compelled to hold this up against Jurassic Park, yet I don't expect shark movies to compete with Jaws. The conclusion I've come to is that Jaws was a thoroughly sincere movie that wasn't in any way schlocky. As such, it left the door open for lesser filmmakers to make schlocky shark movies without fear of comparison. When we watch recent shark movies like Thrash, Chum, The Devil's Mouth etc we don't think about Jaws because they're practically operating in a different genre. While Jurassic Park has Spielberg's sincerity, it's also a very schlocky movie (in the best possible way), so anyone who makes a schlocky dinosaur movie now has to accept the comparison, unfair or not.
Mitchell's film delivers on the schlock, but it never convinces in its sincerity, and its plotting is so uninspired that despite a few thrills you can't help wonder what the point of it all is. Given it's from the filmmaker behind It Follows and the divisive Under the Silver Lake, and is produced by Mr Mystery Box himself, JJ Abrams, you expect it to expose some hidden layer that has been kept out of the marketing, but it really is just about a suburban family trying not to be eaten. As movies about suburban families trying not to be eaten go, it's technically very well-executed, but I can't help but feel it's Mitchell's attempt to convince Hollywood that after derailing his career with Silver Lake he can make something blandly entertaining and thoroughly unchallenging. If so, he's succeeded.
The End of Oak Street is in UK/ROI cinemas from August 14th.
