Like many others, I love a good dinosaur blockbuster, specifically the Jurassic Park films. They are so foundational for what they did for both the blockbuster and dinosaur films themselves, and Hollywood has endlessly been trying to replicate it and failing miserably. There is no single film in the whole, now seven-film-long, Jurassic Park franchise that even comes close to the original, failing to capture what truly made it special. As much as some of the others are fun to watch, they truly lack any of the cutting edge that the original film had, whether it be the ground-breaking effects, excellent characters, or just the general warning it provokes that mankind should not trifle with nature. That warning loses its impact when you make so many of them about nearly the same concept! Still, outside of that landmark franchise, there is little for dino fans to sink their teeth into. However, when I saw the trailer for The End of Oak Street, I was particularly intrigued and considered the idea that we may be getting the next big dinosaur film. With the brilliant Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor starring, and director David Robert Mitchell taking the reins, it certainly looked possible. Mitchell’s filmography, specifically It Follows, lines him up for an anxiety-inducing thrill ride that definitely had the potential to, at least somewhat, stack up to Jurassic Park. Though for many this has struck well, I can only question: how did this go so wrong? This is a parodic attempt at recreating Spielberg magic, with a messy script and a complete tonal imbalance that ruins the whole thing. It is nicely shot and has some well-crafted sequences, but The End of Oak Street feels like an uncomfortable mashup of two different films, and it makes you question who this is made for.

The End of Oak Street places us in the shoes of the Platt family, who live in an idyllic suburb amongst lots of nuclear families similar to their own. It’s complete with disgruntled neighbours that complain to them about their dog, Starbuck, using their back gardens as a litter tray, but also lovely, peaceful people that keep the community friendly. Set in 1982, this is quite obviously an homage to that typical Spielberg setup, mixing the ordinary with the coming extraordinary. The Platts are rather out of sorts, trying to carry on even though they know they are falling apart. Greg (Ewan McGregor) has lost his job and is spending most of his time delivering pizzas to help the family out, and is choosing to ignore his strained relationship with his wife, Denise (Anne Hathaway). Denise writes a book in secret about a woman who has her bags ready to go and leave her family to start anew, a sentiment that is clearly autobiographically influenced by her. The kids, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery), are aware of their crumbling family camaraderie and yet feel hopeless to help bring it back once again. However, a strange event, complete with a blinding flash of blue light, somehow transports the family, their house, and the whole street back in time to a land filled with dinosaurs. The Platts must put aside their family woes and come together to survive the predators that are eating their neighbourhood, one person at a time.

From a technical perspective, The End of Oak Street is a mostly well-made film, complete with some great action sequences, flashy camera work, and some great visual effects. There are rarely points where this film does not at least look good, apart from some iffy bits of green screen here and there, but we are used to that in blockbusters these days. Action scenes are shot with a thrilling nature, whether it be grand-scale chase scenes across the neighbourhood, or some tight, claustrophobic sequences in hallways of houses; they are all shot and edited in a way that keeps the thrill pretty consistently. That is at least the case if you factor in purely how technically well-crafted these sequences are and nothing else. The problem with these scenes is that the characters are so unbelievably stupid and seemingly lacking in the sensory department, which takes you completely out of the film. Nobody seems to have any peripheral vision, failing to see the huge 20-foot dinosaur that is next to them, and that takes the tension away from those scenes because you cannot fathom how blind or deaf these characters can be. One scene features a giant snake-like dinosaur slithering through the house, and not a single person seems to notice it, even though it is literally slithering through all the hallways. Whether they were preoccupied with something else or not is unimportant because surely in such a hostile environment, you would be checking everywhere all the time? Clearly not in this film, and the fact that it is constant, as opposed to just one scene, makes it especially frustrating. I can respect the craft overall of these scenes, but, as with all the problems surrounding this film, the characters end up tarnishing that craft in almost every instance.

The script and characters in The End of Oak Street are quite uninteresting, boring, and messily written. Firstly, although many blockbusters seem to do this now, there is so much needless, over-explanatory dialogue. For example, when Greg and Denise find a sort of wormhole portal that they can see the present day through, Greg feels the need to exclaim something along the lines of ‘maybe this is how we get home?’, going on to repeat himself. It is infuriating because, one, it is obviously their ticket out of there, and two, it gives the audience no agency to work these things out, even if it may be obvious. A single look of hope or joy would have sufficed, but the use of lines like that stamps all over the ‘show, not tell’ approach that writers are always encouraged to use. Perhaps the biggest problem that the writing has is that it is a complete mess of tone, to the point where it is exhausting. The best example I can give of why this is comes in the form of a literal dinosaur sex scene being the preceding scene to one of the most shocking and brutal scenes in the film. They feel so far removed from each other that they may as well be in different films and, for me, it simply does not work. There are multiple offences of this, and it gets to a point that I had to just laugh at everything that happened because it all felt so ridiculous and so messy. A crucial moment towards the end, when the family is trying to escape, turns into a hilarious moment instead. In what should be a harrowing moment, one of them takes a bit of a tumble, and it is cut in such a way and built up to so much, only to deliver a ridiculous anticlimax that you cannot help but be baffled by. It certainly feels like a parody of a Spielberg-type film, and I do not say that as a compliment. It has all those beats that should work, but its messed-up tone prevents them from landing. The kids, for example, do not have much going on with their characters, but Brian clearly has this Spielbergian coming-of-age setup where he has this girl he likes, and it rarely develops at all from what is set up. He is a scared kid running away from a bully at the start of the film, and she sees him like that in that moment, thinking less of him. The issue is that is all he really stays as throughout the film. There is hardly a heroic moment for him at all, and it would have felt very rewarding for him to have his moment and prove that he is growing up. Except nothing of the sort comes, and he is instead reduced to being the annoying, snivelling child the whole film rather than having any satisfying development. Denise and Greg’s threat of divorce and subsequent rekindling of their relationship through trauma is incredibly rushed, and there are not enough moments of them building that relationship back up for it to have any impact. It all just feels so flat and it is hard to care about what is happening at all when the characters are so devoid of satisfying substance.

The End of Oak Street is a frustrating watch and, as someone who really wanted to like it, it is tremendously disappointing considering the talent attached to it. It is important to note that a lot of people are enjoying this film, so if it does look like something you would also enjoy, I would encourage you to still give it a fair shot. As somebody who much prefers a film with a fair degree of substance to it rather than just action, this did not fulfil me at all, and it is made worse by how bad the existing substance can be. Still, with the talent here, there is merit as you might expect. Anne Hathaway practically carries the film on her back through her performance, even if some of the lines she has to say are unconvincing, to say the least. David Robert Mitchell definitely shows some of his previous directing talent here, crafting action scenes well and giving them a somewhat thrilling edge. But when you have McGregor doing a performance that simply does not match Hathaway’s in any way, and such grievous tonal inconsistency throughout, it does still come to feel like a misfire for Mitchell this time around. If you fancy turning your brain off for a bit, then this may do the trick, but if you do look for some substance to latch onto during this, you will walk away disappointed as I did.