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EDITORS NOTE: The Tribune is pleased to present the debut of our new movie reviews column, anchored by our columnist Tyler Henson. Going forward, we’ll strive to provide you weekly reviews of significant new releases, accompanied by capsules of previously released movies. ENJOY !
BY TYLER HENSON
Between The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day, two of the biggest movie events of the summer, there hasn’t been a ton of room left over recently for other movies to make much of an impression. That’s the case with The End of Oak Street, a film that probably could have made quite a splash under different circumstances, and instead has been flying somewhat under the radar since its release more than a week ago.
Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor play a married couple, Denise and Greg Platt living in an idyllic suburban neighborhood with their teenage children Brian (Christian Convery) and Audrey (Maisy Stella). But there are cracks in the facade. Their marriage is on the rocks, they’re having trouble making ends meet, and the kids are dreading the inevitable divorce.
Meanwhile, strange phenomena are popping up around the neighborhood. Flashes of light, along with inexplicable things like extinct plants sprouting on people’s property. One neighbor even wakes up to a giant pile of dung in his backyard, much to his fury. And then, one night around eleven o’clock, the whole block is somehow transported hundreds of millions of years into the past.
Nobody realizes at first. So much of the neighborhood has been moved that things appear normal… almost. People get up for work and try to go about their day. It’s not until ferocious dinosaurs wander into the streets and begin chasing, and eating, every human they can find, that Oak Street’s residents catch on that something is very wrong. Everyday life for the Platt’s has suddenly become a desperate fight for survival.
The film is a throwback to the lean, mean high-concept thrillers of the 80’s. Produced by J.J. Abrams, a devoted student of the era’s two most defining figures, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, and it’s written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, best known for his modern horror classic It Follows (2014). Oak Street evokes the era well.
The story is not only set in the early 80’s, featuring casual references to Carl Sagan and Battlestar Galactica, its style closely matches the tonal combo of humor, horror, and family drama that made many of that decade’s films so memorable. It could almost pass as a spin off to Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983).
His polarizing follow-up, Under the Silver Lake (2018), a paranoid neo-noir mystery so strange it’s almost surreal, was described by some as a riff on David Lynch. I’ve always felt it had more in common with Brian De Palma, director of outsized and perverse genre exercises like Scarface (1983) and Body Double (1984).
After the negative reaction to Silver Lake, Mitchell seemed to vanish – though that film has recently begun to attract a cult following (Count myself among its defenders). Now he’s finally returned, and for End of Oak Street, Mitchell has clearly reigned in his eccentricities.
Channeling beloved Spielberg thrill rides like Jurassic Park (1993), coupled with the suburban fantasy of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and throwing in a bit of the madness and mayhem of Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist (1982) for good measure, Mitchell sets his sights on simply delivering a solid summer entertainment. And that’s what he does.
His screenplay and direction work hard to properly follow the old-fashioned formula. The film doesn’t hit the ground running like a lot of this year’s action spectacles. It takes its time setting up the premise, the characters, the relationships, and the setting.
It might even be described as somewhat slowly paced by today’s standards. But slow and slowly paced are two different things. Slow is simply boring; slowly paced is deliberate, a strategy for rewarding the viewer’s investment and patience. This is the latter.
Once the story really gets going, it hardly lets up, and rather than leaping right in to frantic action, Mitchell again controls the payoffs carefully. He hides the dino’s as much as possible, making them into properly menacing movie monsters, and builds the intensity in steady increments.
Tension is expertly sustained. We’re not just watching the family run for their lives from feathery velociraptors and big red scaly beasts, we’re also seeing them struggle to remain a functioning family unit. Their fear comes just as much from Denise and Greg remaining unable to reconcile their differences as it does from the hungry prehistoric animals outside waiting to devour them.
The biggest set pieces are choreographed with impressive ingenuity. Showstoppers include a sequence where a giant snake makes itself an uninvited houseguest, and an extended chase with the aforementioned scaly red dino, which is a real tour-de-force. Mitchell’s creative staging greatly heightens the suspense. Backgrounds become an open canvas for looming threats. You’ll find yourself frequently shouting mentally at the screen, “look behind you !” “Look behind you !”
Several gruesome moments are strategically utilized to keep us on our toes. One scene in particular, the most intense and violent and shocking (you’ll know it when you see it), made the entire audience in my screening yell out loud in disbelief, myself included. The film is not excessively graphic or gory, but when Mitchell needs to get the job done, he really goes for it.
The cast is well chosen, and the writing is smart. The Platt’s bicker and argue and joke and instinctively try to protect one another in ways that make them feel authentically like a family. As they go toe-to-toe with the dinos, it’s clear none of them have any useful skills to rely upon. These are just average people. They barely know what they’re doing.
The Platt’s stay alive mostly through chance. What few weapons they can get their hands on hardly faze the enormous creatures coming after them, and running gags involve things like Brian repeatedly failing to make effective use of his archery set. There’s a huge laugh that comes when Greg actually manages to get in a lucky shot with a sledgehammer.
Oak Street is a fun, scary thriller that’s been crafted and calculated with great skill. By the time it reached its climactic twenty minutes, I could feel the people around me biting their nails in terror, and I was right there with them. The last scenes offer some clever twists, allowing for a most unusual happy ending. What threads are left hanging encourage some discussion on the way out.
The Odyssey and Spider-Man are still commanding most of the attention at the box office, but Oak Street, although modest by comparison, is definitely another summer spectacle worth everyone’s time. It has the shortest running time (99 minutes) of the bunch, by far, and offers a more than worthwhile bang for the buck. See it with friends, and load up on popcorn.
All of the movies listed above are proudly presented by the Contra Costa Cinema. You can visit https://contracostacinema.com for both current and upcoming showtimes.
