The End Of Oak Street (2026)

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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Mubi Monday: Under The Silver Lake (2018)

Although this is his third feature film, David Robert Mitchell's Under The Silver Lake most definitely feels like a sophomore effort. It's a film made by someone who has been given the budget and casting choices to let loose and indulge himself after making a name with his previous outing (in this case, the enjoyable It Follows).

The plot, seemingly dense but also actually fairly slim for the 2hr+ runtime, sees a young man named Sam (Andrew Garfield) drawn into a Hitchcockian web that involves a missing girl (Riley Keough), a number of local urban legends, and a conspiracy theory so grandiose that it dances and twirls through absurd territory. It's a mix of The Big Lebowski, Inherent Vice, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, with the obvious influence of The Long Goodbye also in there. It's also frustrating, because so many individual moments are great, without adding up to anything really worthwhile.

Garfield is great in the lead role, playing someone smart but without any drive or focus. He's so likeable that it's easy to watch the film without being preoccupied by the many questions we should have about him. What happened recently in his life? What did he do to get money when he was working? How the hell does he attract some gorgeous women while placing himself firmly in slacker/loser territory? You get some details that help to answer the first question but not much else. Now I don't need a film to fill in every space for me but when you spend most of the lengthy runtime with a character who delves deeper and deeper into an investigation of his own making then it's good to know a bit more about that character, as far as I am concerned. Instead, Mitchell's script is more concerned with putting together a collage of cool visual motifs and soundtrack choices. It's a fever dream, but one without the sense of urgency or energy, which is an odd combination.

The direction matches the script, not bothering about logic or coherence when there's a chance to jump from one memorable moment to the next (and the less said about the repeated touch of having women turn to the main character and eventually start making dog noises the better). This means that you get a lot of wonderful moments in a film that only had to bring them all together in a satisfying way to become something great. It doesn't manage that, instead turning into one of those enjoyable albums that you stay in love with because there are always two or three tracks that you skip, leading to some confusion about why you love it so on the rare occasions when you listen to it all the way through.

Alongside Garfield, Keough does well in her small role, and you have decent turns from Riki Lindhome, Grace Van Patten, Jimmi Simpson, Topher Grace, and, in one particularly memorable scene, Jeremy Bobb, playing a super-talented songwriter responsible for all of the most memorable tunes throughout the years. The acting is pretty flawless throughout, which is another major plus helping to keep the film enjoyable in the lesser scenes.

I liked this, at times I liked it a lot, but it's obviously a film that was made by Mitchell coming up with some memorable ideas and moments that he then had to find a plot for. I don't think he came up with a good enough plot, not for the lack of trying, but the individual moments ensure that it's not without many pleasures for cinephiles.

7/10

Here's the film on shiny disc.
Americans can browse a whole load of movies here.

Mubi Monday: It Follows (2014)

It Follows is the popular horror movie written and directed by David Robert Mitchell that updates the classic idea of "Casting The Runes" by turning the curse into a STD. It's a hugely entertaining film, with a few fantastic set-pieces throughout, but also massively flawed, in ways that will be covered shortly.

Maika Monroe plays Jay, a young woman who finds her life thrown into chaos after a sexual encounter with a young man (Jake Weary) who has deliberately chosen to pass on a deadly curse. He immediately informs Jay of the situation: it will appear to her in humanoid form that anyone "uninfected" will be unable to see, it doesn't move quickly but is relentless, she will die if it gets hold of her, the only way to become safe is to pass it along, if Jay is caught and killed then it will go back to pursuing the previous victim. Jay tries to explain everything to some of her family and friends, and it's no surprise that they find it hard to believe until they start to see things that are scary and inexplicable. Can they help Jay to stay safe, and is there a way to break the cycle?

There's a lot to like here, not least of all the lead performance from Monroe. She's very easy to like, which helps to make up for the lack of real personality in the mixed group of supporting players (Keir Gilchrist has an understandable crush on Monroe's character, Olivia Luccardi has a memorable moment in which she ends a thought by breaking wind, and that covers the "highlights" of moments that don't focus on Monroe). The general dialogue is good, pacing is brisk, and there's a good synth soundtrack by Rich "Disasterpeace" Vreeland (despite the overused trick of the volume increasing in a way that signifies an approaching terror, not unlike THAT cue in the John Williams score for Jaws). You also get good special effects, all the more effective for being used quite sparingly, and the strength of that main premise.

Mitchell shows great confidence for his second feature, but his creation of such a great central conceit is as frustrating as it is entertaining and intriguing. Considering the potential here, there are a number of ways in which It Follows lets down viewers. First of all, moments that play things out with the potential to comment on abuse, and particularly sexual abuse, seem to veer close to saying something meaningful and then swerve away at the last minute. It's not that any horror film MUST have more to it than the superficial tension and scares, but Mitchell occasionally shows that he knows the potential of his premise (e.g. the scene in which police are questioning Monroe over her sexual encounter, certain specific incarnations of the curse) and that is what makes it harder to overlook.

It's also hard to view the curse as anything but inevitable, which is another problem. This isn't something you can pass onto someone else and be done with, nor is it something you can surreptitiously return to the person who initially gave it to you. It's a constant thing, as explained in the film, because once you pass it along to someone then that will only give you a temporary reprieve until the next person is killed. That's fine for the duration of the movie, and it ends with a suitable final image, but it's no good once you start to think outside the confines of that runtime.

Those things are easier to forgive, however, than the main thing to take viewers out of the movie, which is a truly dire third act that involves the worst plan to try to capture an evil entity since Ray, Egon, and Peter tried to jump on that ghost in the library at the start of Ghostbusters. In all seriousness, if anyone can explain to me why that was the big plan then please let me know. I understand that the characters soon realise it won't work, as things start to happen, but I don't understand how they reached their flawed conclusion in the first place. Are we just supposed to believe that the character who came up with the idea is a complete idiot, making the others more idiotic for going along with the scheme?

And yet, despite those big mis-steps, the film still works. It's a fantastic mood piece, with that score matched by some fine, creeping, cinematography (by Mike Gioulakis), and manages to keep you suspending disbelief for a good hour or so. And it also gains points for trying something a bit different.

7/10

You can buy It Follows here.
Americans can buy it here.