The End of Oak Street: It’s Not the Dinosaurs That Will Surprise You
By John Kirk
Rating: A
The trailer and poster for The End of Oak Street both give away the fact that, for some unknown reason, dinosaurs have taken over a small pocket of suburbia. What isn’t known is how they got there.
For a film that is confident enough to give away a sizeable amount of its premise from the get-go, The End of Oak Street remains filled with surprises and is a complete crowd-pleaser from start to finish.
Greg Platt (Ewan McGregor) has a lovely family. His wife Denise (Anne Hathaway) and their two kids Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery) are typical Americans in a nice little suburb in 1982. But they have their issues.
Greg has been working extra jobs to pay the bills. Denise is struggling with her role as a mother and wife, trying to figure out why her husband is distant. Audrey is a brilliant science kid who worries about not going to college after graduation and Brian can sense the tension in the family and is getting into trouble as only a 13-year-old boy can.
One night, the neighbourhood suffers a massive power outage. The Platts wake up the next morning to discover that the lights are still off, the water isn’t working, and there’s a six-foot pile of dung in their neighbour’s back yard.
Oh, did I mention the predatory animal sounds ominously howling from the green space behind their house?
Part of this film’s success is the finely balanced way it times the appearance of the dinosaurs. The audience knows it’s coming but the characters don’t. The suspense in their discovery is thoroughly entertaining.
Tricks like a brush of movement over the shoulder of a character or the rustle of bushes in the backyard tease the audience into waiting for the big reveal. With IMAX, the audience is constantly watching all four corners of the screen for any of these hints.
The big mystery is how this happened. Let’s just say this is another example of the film’s clever storytelling. The film falls into the tradition of The Twilight Zone and its 1982 setting reinforces the conceit. It’s a Spielberg-like type of story that could have only existed in the 1980s and readily brings in the participation of the audience to willingly surrender their sense of disbelief and simply have fun.
But that’s also a bonus for 1980s kids like me who recognize period-specific things like a Lite-Brite, a Commodore 64, and the soundtrack. I goofed up on identifying the release date of Steve Winwood’s “Valerie.” If screenwriter David Robert Mitchell managed to top my knowledge of the eighties, then I willingly salute his superior fact-checking.
It’s also fun to see McGregor play the infuriatingly optimistic Greg. When confronted with the danger, he thinks that everything will eventually work itself out. When Denise convinces him that doing nothing will get them killed, there’s a bit of comedy between the husband and wife that speaks to the nature of their relationship.
When the Platts realize that they may have to adapt to this new world, there’s an immense sense of horror. But within that horror, family dynamics allow for the unique type of humour that only families can understand. Whether they are teasing each other or complaining about the neighbours, the Platts love each other.
It’s fun to hear your own surprise echoed in the shock and excitement of the rows of people behind you. Screams were abundant and there were many moments that managed to take the audience by surprise. The major strength of this film is how it manages to completely lull you into thinking you know what to expect going in, only to discover how wrong you were coming out.
The End of Oak Street. Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell. Starring Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella, and Christian Convery. In theatres August 14.