The End of Oak Street Review

The End of Oak Street Review

Anne Hathaway is having quite the year, she is starring in her fourth movie of the year, this time she is starring with Ewan McGregor and dinosaurs in The End of Oak Street. I was able to see the film last night and here is my review of the film. Let us go!

The Good

My excitement for the movie was tame, the trailers looked fun enough, but I was not sure if this movie would be good or bad. Then the early reviews came out and were positive and now having seen the film…I really dug The End of Oak Street. I thought this was a fun movie that from beginning to end, I enjoyed the film and it was just a classic blockbuster that we do not get a lot of these days. It has the big blockbuster action spectacle that we expect in a 2026 blockbuster, but it also feels like this old school blockbuster that would’ve come out in the ‘80s and ‘90s. I have seen some of the early reviews compare it to the Amblin films and like how Steven Spielberg probably would’ve directed this film had it been released 30-40 years ago. There is some truth to that, it has this old school blockbuster vibe to it, that is refreshing in the year 2026 when most of the blockbusters that do not feel like old school films the way this film does. It of course has a Jurassic Park vibe to it because of the dinosaurs, but it also has like The Goonies feels at other points or a little bit like The Twilight Zone. That is another thing that is fun about this movie, it is a mix of things while all feeling original and nothing at all like the movies that I just mentioned. 

From there, as it is a dinosaur movie you must talk about the dinosaurs and simply put, there is some great dinosaur action in this movie. There is plenty of dinosaur carnage with a large body count and it is just a lot of fun. It is one of the ways that this film can differ itself from Jurassic Park, it is not on an island, but it is in the suburbs. It is one of the biggest missed opportunities of the Jurassic franchise, which is that we do not get to see dinosaurs in the real world and The End of Oak Street delivers that experience. It can provide different action, but there’s houses in the way and you do not know if people can go inside the houses or if there’s dinosaurs in there. As the movie is going along, it keeps on finding new ways to build tension and new types of conflict for our characters to be in. From there, it is also a period piece film set in 1982. That means that our characters do not have access to the technology that the characters in the Jurassic movies do. For example, in the movie you see Anne Hathaway with a shotgun and Ewan McGregor with a bat, because there’s normal suburban parents so it would make sense that they would not have a lot of military grade weapons to help them. With it being in the suburbs with normal people, it means that the dinosaur action can provide a distinct experience from what the Jurassic films are able to bring. One of the things that I love about the dinosaur carnage is that this movie is relentlessly brutal and violent. This film is PG-13 but it’s a hard PG-13 and it’s very easy to see a version of this that is rated-R, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they had to cut out a lot of violence because of the MPAA telling them to do so. But there are a lot of violent bloody deaths that happen in this movie, so this film 100% delivers the dinosaur carnage that people would expect from a big, budgeted dinosaur movie like this. 

And I thought the script from David Robert Mitchell was solid. What I love about the script is that it keeps on subverting expectations. In an interview, Ewan McGregor talked about how he was surprised that it was a dinosaur movie, because when he started reading it, he was invested in the characters and thought it was just a family drama. You watch the movie, and obviously the audience is not going to have the same experience as Ewan because we know that it is a dinosaur movie. But you can see how it’s able to trick the audience, because the beginning of the movie makes everything feel so normal and like if you didn’t know what this movie was, you’d be surprised that it was a dinosaur movie because it’s a great family drama at the beginning. The other point where the script’s subversion works, is about 60%-70% of the way through the film. Where there is something that happens (and I do not even want to hint at what it is). But it is something that I did not see coming and truly shocked my audience. From that moment on, I really did not know what to expect from this movie. That is when you have a movie that can be effective at so many different things, when you can deliver the thrills but also subvert the audience’s expectations but in the right ways. This is not a perfect script; we will talk more about that later. But I was surprised by how many times my expectations kept on being subverted because it kept delivering something I was not expecting. 

As I mentioned earlier, this is a movie that stars Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, two actors that I thoroughly enjoy and actors that are fun charismatic movie stars. They are shown through starring in blockbusters that they can lead movies like this, and this is another example of that. 2026 is an interesting year because there are so many actors that have multiple movies coming out this year, the big ones are Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Robert Pattinson. But what’s fun is that Anne Hathaway is in more movies, she is in five 2026 movies and we have another one coming in October. Hathaway is continuously able to display that she is an immense talent. Between this film, The Devil Wears Prada 2, and The Odyssey she is in three different movies, and she is playing different characters in those movies, and she can be great in them. Where in this movie, you can buy her as this normal mom and in the back half when she needs to become the action hero battling dinosaurs with a shotgun, you are able to buy her as that. Ewan McGregor is another very solid actor, I do not think he has given quite as many moments to shine as Anne Hathaway, but he is still a very solid actor, and it is always fun to see him on screen. They have great chemistry with each other and enjoy spending time with these characters on this adventure because they are great actors and you like seeing them. 

Finally, the biggest thing about this movie that surprised me was that it ended and it made me go “I want to see more.” Obviously, since this is discussing the film’s ending, I am not going to spoil anything. But it sets up a few things with the lore and what is going on that can easily be explored in a sequel and I would be totally done for that. I am curious to see what the overall reception is to the film this weekend, especially the ending. The ending works as is, and it made me excited to see more, and I hope we get more. But I think some people could leave this film thinking that was a bit rushed and not the most satisfying. That did not bother me at all, I left on a high note and really enjoyed this film.

The Bad

As is the case with so many monster movies, there are several lapses in the logic and several times where you think to yourself “why don’t the characters just do this?” Overall, I think it’s a better script than the later Jurassic sequel, but this movie could leave people having the same annoyance as the Jurassic sequels with having this thought of “these characters can really act stupid.” It is not a big issue with the film for me; I have come to expect that sort of logic in movies like this. I had my expectations in line in terms of the characters not acting the smartest in certain situations. I do not know who to blame for this, but there are a few scenes in which the characters do not see a dinosaur, but with how it has been staged it is very weird that the characters do not see the dinosaur. I do not know if that is a direct thing or if that was in the script and on purpose, but it was something that I noticed and I do wish it were handled a little bit differently. 

Also, the two kids in the movie felt very underdeveloped. The actors did not do a bad job; they were perfectly fine in the movie. But they add in some stuff with the kids early on to try and give them depth and give them arcs throughout the film. The film is focused more on the parents, probably because they are bigger names. But it means that the stuff with the kids feels like an after thought in the movie. The beginning of the movie shows that the boy is being bullied and he likes this girl. Those elements kind of come back into play later, but not in any sort of significant way and when it does, it does not mean anything and feels out of place. I do not know if there was some stuff cut out from the film and the original film was about 10-15 minutes and where these elements had a bigger part to play. Even the older sister has things set up about going to college and being jealous of another girl, that once again does not really tie into anything. You can see how there’s clear character arcs for these characters, but the film does not really do much with the stuff that is set up to make it have any meaningful payoff in the third act. 

Finally, the director David Robert Mitchell and the cinematographer Mike Gioulakis, use something called a split diopter shot and they are shown a lot in the trailers for the movie. Looking at the IMDB trivia page for the film, it is said they were used 66 different times. If you have seen the movie or are planning to see the film, then you know you will know what shots I am referring to. I found that specific shot style to be distracting and I do not think it fit the movie, specifically the scenes in which it was used. The one that I most noticed was during this conversation scene between the families, that I think they were used to show the closeness and personal dynamics of the family, but I think they could’ve found a different way to show that and the ways it was used I thought were distracting and it didn’t really add anything to the film itself. 

Final Thoughts: Overall, The End of Oak Street was just a fun movie. What I liked most about it, was that it was a film that is a big screen blockbuster that feels like it would’ve come out in the ‘80s and ‘90s and it has this Amblin feel to it. It also found ways to differ itself from Jurassic Park and it even does things the Jurassic Park movies lack doing, which I very much appreciated. This is not a perfect film, it has its flaws but overall, this is a great summer blockbuster that everybody should see because I want more movies like this, original big blockbusters. 

The Score: 8.7/10 (B+)