I think it's fair to say that a large amount of pop culture over the past half century has been shaped and dominated by two Steves. There's Steven Spielberg and Stephen King. I mention both here because The End Of Oak Street, the latest film from writer-director David Robert Mitchell, takes samples from both of those icons. Maybe that would have happened anyway, I don't know Mitchell well enough to know all of his preferences, but it's hard to think that it's not a sign of J. J. Abrams doing a lot of work in his producer role.
It’s 1982. Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor are Denise and Greg Platt, a couple who seem to be struggling to remain in a pretty unsatisfying marriage. They have two teenage children, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery), and a loyal family dog named Starbuck. Life may not be great, but it's fairly normal. Until they wake up one morning to find that the neighbourhood has been transformed into a prehistoric area, complete with ancient vegetation and a number of dinosaurs. So begins an adventure to find their way home again, or . . . to get their home back home again.
Other titles I considered as viable options for this movie were Jurassic Shrug and Jurassic World: Inconsequence. It's not a bad film while it's on, there are a number of very enjoyable little set-pieces throughout, but it's in line with pretty much every other David Robert Mitchell movie in how there's ultimately no proper feeling of resolution.
The cast all do well, Hathaway is having herself a hell of a year, but they're only present to be surprised and terrorised by the dinosaurs. Any other character development feels clumsy and trite, whether they're plucked from the fields planted by Spielberg or the fields planted by King. Both Stella and Convery have to be more reckless than the adults, and they're eventually joined by Jordan Alexa Davis, who does good work alongside them. P. J. Byrne is an annoying neighbour, Anne Gee Byrd and Emily Kuroda are nicer neighbours, and Hudson Meek plays the kind of bully who seems capable of killing one of his victims (which is VERY much in line with every bully written by Stephen King).
A basic screenplay isn't a huge problem when it comes to something aiming to sell itself as mainstream blockbuster fare. While it's not great, Mitchell does enough here to give us identifiable relationships and moments of dino tension. He just doesn't do much more, and most of the better moments will have you wondering what movie is being homaged (hint, it's usually a Spielberg one, hence the unnecessary early-1980s setting).
The special effects are as good as they need to be, although I think that the best creature designs feature in a fun moment that hints at other directions the film could have gone in before something threatens our leads once again, the score from Michael Giacchino doesn't make much of an impression, and the 99-minute runtime at least shows an attempt to stop the film from overstaying its welcome. It's a failed attempt, but an attempt nonetheless.
Take 10 minutes off this, figure out whether you want to write a better explanation for the strange events or just leave things completely mysterious, and throw in a few more species of predators and this could have been a winner. As it stands, it's just a pale cross-pollination of those two big Steves. And we have lots of them to choose from already.
5/10
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