The End of Oak Street review: Anne Hathaway helms an entertaining and unique dino-thriller!
Packed with jumpscares, humour, nostalgia and lots of dinosaurs, The End of Oak Street is definitely one sci-fi film you shouldn’t be missing out on! The End of Oak Street review: When an ordinary family is put into an extraordinary situation, they can either succumb to it or survive every curveball thrown at them. David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street, does exactly that but the extraordinary situation here is literally an entire suburb being put together with dinosaurs because of a cosmic event and watching the chaos unfold on its own. The movie follows The Platts, when Denise Platt (Anne Hathaway) and her husband Greg (Ewan McGregor) and their children, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery) have to figure out what’s happening in their neighbourhood and try their best to not become lunch for the dinosaurs, it makes for an entertaining watch to say the least! David Robert Mitchell knows he has taken a genre that’s been shown in cinema multiple times and has been a huge part of pop culture. The Jurassic Park comparisons were going to be obvious and with the bicycles, cassette tapes and vintage cars from the 80s, it reminds you of Netflix’s mega hit Stranger Things which is still pretty fresh in our minds. Despite all of this, the story finds its own grounding and serves a fresh new perspective on a dinosaur filled thriller. He also brings his expertise from his previous horror films and makes daily life places like the backyard, quiet streets, homes into spaces we can no longer trust or feel safe in. His direction is also proof that in a dinosaur movie, the pre-historic creature does not need to be in every frame to scare the audiences, when sometimes a simple shadow in the background, a sound out of nowhere or a small glimpse through the window is more than enough to create that fear. Also Read: Spider-Man: Brand New Day review: Tom Holland delivers his most mature, emotionally vulnerable Spider-Man yet! Having said that, when the dinosaurs do full-fledgedly appear, they look magnificent and the various different breeds of them are bound to remind you of everything you have learnt about them in your childhood. The action with them in the frame is engaging and sometimes brutal. The Platts have problems of their own like any family does. Denise and Greg are in a strained marriage and their children have their own anxieties because of it. The life-threatening situation that the family is put in becomes the perfect scenario for them to address the issues they have been brushing under the carpet and that feels like a promising foundation for the film to be set on. Anne Hathaway plays Denise with a lot of vulnerability and makes her feel like a human instead of a protagonist in a movie. She allows herself to be frustrated, mad and disappointed when she needs to be. And she takes things in charge when she is supposed to. Instead of just limiting her to be a mother, the film puts her at the forefront and asks an ordinary woman to unlock a side of herself even she didn’t know she had. Hathaway most definitely keeps this film afloat on multiple occasions. Ewan McGregor as Greg is a lot more calm and quiet compared to Denise . His approach to this situation is a lot different than hers and that becomes one of the film’s most pivotal moments. The film’s runtime is also one of the things that works in its favour. In just one and a half hours, it manages to tell you a good story that lingers on your mind and proves that an insanely long time is not required just because a story has the words ‘sci-fi’ in it. Nor The Platts nor the dinosaurs over welcome their stay and have more than enough personality to keep things moving to the next big plot twist. It is a story that does not come from an already established franchise or a popular cinematic universe, it is just a family film with an unique and absurd premise that more and more big studios should take note of! The End of Oak Street is currently playing at a theatre near you! For more reviews, follow us on @socialketchupbinge .
Social Ketchup17 Aug