‘The End of Oak Street’ review: A crisp and efficient survival thriller
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It’s 1982, the year Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra Terrestrial came out, three years before the first Back to the Future movie, and 11 years before the inaugural Jurassic Park film. This is the year in which a wormhole brings dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures into the backyards of an American suburban town
The overnight arrival of the intruders adds to the drama within a boilerplate American family. Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor) have a mildly strained marriage, and are keeping it together for the sake of their teenaged children Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery). Faced with rampaging, perpetually hungry animals, the Platts muster together every available resource to escape. Only, they can’t.
David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street is an old-fashioned survival thriller that could well have been released in 1982 itself. While sketchy about the science behind the sudden appearance of creatures that are straight out of a palaeontology textbook, the film delivers on the undeniable thrill of watching people run for their lives.
The scale is never overwhelming. The visual effects are clean rather than being distracting. There are barely any extraneous characters or sub-plots.
The family dynamic is conservative, with Denise’s intrepid housewife one of the few concessions to modern sensibilities. The performances are in...