The End of Oak Street Review: A Surprisingly Strong Family Survival Story
When I first saw the trailer for The End of Oak Street a few months ago, it didn’t exactly look like something I’d be rushing to see. Maybe I’ve just been a little burnt out on dinosaur movies after the last few Jurassic Park entries, but I wasn’t going into this expecting much. What did surprise me, though, was how positive the early reception seemed to be. I still had my reservations, but it was enough to make me wonder if this might have more going for it than the trailer suggested.
Directed by David Robert Mitchell and starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, The End of Oak Street follows a family whose ordinary suburban life is turned upside down when their entire neighbourhood is somehow transported back to the age of dinosaurs.
Just think about how wild that is. A regular family, already dealing with their own problems and complicated dynamics, suddenly has to figure out how to survive alongside some of the most dangerous creatures to ever walk the Earth. It’s a fascinating premise, and thankfully, the movie does quite a bit with it, helped by some strong performances and a surprisingly effective sense of tension.
Set in 1982, the movie follows the Platt family: Greg and Denise, played by Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway, and their children, Audrey and Brian, played by Maisy Stella and Christian Convery, respectively. From the very beginning, there’s a noticeable strain in Greg and Denise’s marriage. Denise is quietly contemplating divorce and the possibility of starting over, while Greg is dealing with problems of his own, secretly working as a pizza delivery driver after losing his regular job and keeping it from Denise because he doesn’t want her to worry.
That tension doesn’t disappear once the movie introduces its much bigger problem. The End of Oak Street understands that throwing this family into the age of dinosaurs doesn’t suddenly erase everything they were dealing with before. If anything, it puts those problems under even more pressure. Greg and Denise no longer have the time or space to properly confront what’s happening to their marriage because survival immediately becomes the priority, while Audrey and Brian are caught in the middle of a family they can already feel beginning to fracture. The dinosaurs provide the obvious danger, but there’s always this quieter tension running underneath it all: even if the Platts somehow make it home, they still have to figure out what happens to them as a family.
That quieter family tension gives the movie something to hold onto emotionally, but The End of Oak Street still knows when to let the dinosaurs take over. There are plenty of high-octane set pieces that steadily ratchet up the intensity and raise the stakes for the Platts. Some encounters are smaller and more claustrophobic, with dinosaurs chasing people from house to house, while others go much bigger, with massive creatures tearing through cars and homes.
The movie does a great job of making those moments feel chaotic and dangerous, and for the most part, it keeps you on edge. A big part of that comes from the sense of isolation running through the film. At first, the Platts and their neighbours are forced to treat their own homes as shelters, but those same homes quickly start to feel like cages once they realize just how dangerous it is to step outside.
Even the cul-de-sac itself becomes a kind of trap, cutting them off and making the neighbourhood feel smaller and more claustrophobic as the danger closes in. That feeling of being boxed in adds another layer to the tension, because it’s not just about escaping the dinosaurs, it’s about having nowhere truly safe to go. The CGI can look a little wonky at times, but it rarely takes away from how effective or exciting those sequences are.
Everything I’ve discussed above only works as well as it does because of some pretty strong performances from the lead cast. Anne Hathaway is the standout for me, playing Denise as a mother caught between continuing to show up for her family and accepting that her marriage may have reached its end. There’s a quiet frustration to her performance that makes the character feel grounded, even when everything around her becomes completely unreal.
Ewan McGregor’s performance might be a little more divisive. Some people may find him subdued or even slightly lifeless, but I actually think that works for Greg. He’s a man who has just lost his job, is hiding that reality from his family, and can feel the woman he loves slowly slipping away from him. He isn’t supposed to be bursting with energy. There’s a heaviness to him that feels intentional and, for me, believable.
Maisy Stella and Christian Convery are solid as well. Stella brings a protective, supportive energy to the family dynamic, while Convery gives the younger sibling a nice mix of innocence and bravery. Neither feels like they’re simply there to fill out the family, and together they help make the Platts feel like a believable unit rather than just a group of characters thrown into a survival story.
The End of Oak Street ended up being a much better movie than I expected. It isn’t perfect, the CGI can be shaky and there are moments where the pacing slows down, but the strong performances, family drama and constant feeling of isolation give the movie more weight than I anticipated.
There are also a few genuinely funny moments sprinkled throughout, though I’m still not entirely sure how much of that was intentional given the movie’s overall tone. Either way, they provide some welcome relief from all the tension. The dinosaurs may be the main attraction, but it’s the Platts and everything they’re already dealing with that keeps the story grounded. I went in expecting a fairly standard dinosaur movie and came out genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed it.
