The End of Oak Street Review — Anne Hathaway Grabs a Shotgun and Fights Dinosaurs in Her Own Backyard, and It’s Wilder Than the Trailers Show

David Robert Mitchell‘s filmography covers an interesting yet unpredictable directorial path, hopping across different genres from the coming-of-age dramedy The Myth of the American Sleepover to the supernatural chiller It Follows and the darkly comic conspiracy-theory mystery Under the Silver Lake. And now, he pivots into big-budget blockbuster territory, complete with an $85 million budget at his disposal in The End of Oak Street.

Mitchell, who also wrote the screenplay, imagines an intriguing what-if scenario by putting an unsuspecting ordinary family in jeopardy when dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals terrorize their suburban neighborhood. The family in question is the Platts, who’ve been living peacefully in the idyllic 1980s (fictional) suburb of Flowervale. But deep down, their seemingly happy family façade exposes a fracture beginning to fall apart.

This is especially true of Denise (Anne Hathaway), a housewife trying hard to pretend everything is normal. She would spend her free time in the basement, channelling her inner frustration into a manuscript. Greg, in the meantime, has been working part-time delivering pizzas inconspicuously after losing his job. This leaves their two children, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery), caught in the middle of the family friction.

A slow-burn first act gives way to dinosaur carnage

I admit the first act takes its time to pick up the pace, even though I get that Mitchell tries to mirror the Platts’ broken-family dynamics with a slow-burn narrative framed in a series of mundane, long takes. This gives The End of Oak Street a lingering sense of dead air, and Mitchell’s indie-style approach feels like a tonal mismatch before the movie abruptly switches gears into an effects-laden Hollywood tentpole. Frankly, this kind of jarring shift between contrasting tones can work well when done right, with notable examples including Psycho, An American Werewolf in London, From Dusk Till Dawn, and Bone Tomahawk.

Still, if you can get past the sluggish first act, Mitchell manages to deliver on his attacking prehistoric animals-in-the-suburbs promise, turning the earlier plodding family drama into the shocking jolt of a survival horror film. It all happens after a night of mysterious phenomena surrounding a flash of bright light outside the Platts’ house. Then comes the following morning, when things don’t seem right as Mitchell embraces the power of ambiguity and deliberately paced tension — the discovery of water gushing upwards from a fissure in the ground somewhere in the neighborhood, and the sudden but partially obscured sight of an animal of sorts.

And as the stakes gradually build up to a breaking point, Mitchell pounds his movie with a frantic chase as the Platts try to outrun a pack of hungry raptors. The scene itself is thrillingly staged with heavy use of wide-angle shots, making the threat more prominent by showcasing the raptors chasing their human prey out in the open. Backed by Michael Giacchino’s riveting score, it sure demonstrates Mitchell’s flair for staging big action moments, while his prior horror-movie experience in It Follows does come in handy.

Performances, effects, and how far the PG-13 rating goes

It is also worth noting that The End of Oak Street may be PG-13, but rest assured, Mitchell still goes as far as to push the boundaries of its otherwise mainstream-friendly rating. The violence and brutality remain intact, complete with visible scenes where a dinosaur chomps off a human victim’s head, and I’m glad Mitchell doesn’t sell his soul to strict studio-mandated capitalism by turning this movie into a play-safe, bloodless affair.

The equally good news is that The End of Oak Street doesn’t stray far into bloated outcomes, preferring to keep it lean at a compact 99-minute runtime once the Platts and the entire neighborhood realize they are somehow in a prehistoric era after their titular street has completely shifted. Credit also goes to Mitchell for bringing out the best in Anne Hathaway, whose suburban mother role is far from your garden-variety damsel-in-distress archetype.

Instead, her character is more of an unlikely antihero making full use of her maternal and survival instincts to protect her family at all costs. And despite being equipped with a shotgun, she doesn’t automatically transform into a skilled shooter, reacting primarily as a survivalist who only forces herself to pull a trigger out of desperation.

Besides, there are no clear-cut heroes here; even Ewan McGregor’s Greg is less of an alpha-male protector and more of a passive yet regular-guy patriarch. This adds refreshing power dynamics by subverting the general perception of traditional family hierarchy in the typically conservative 1980s. The special effects, which blend CGI and practical approaches, are competently executed but far from seamless, despite the involvement of Industrial Light & Magic.

J.J. Abrams’ mystery-box style cuts both ways

The movie also sees J.J. Abrams serving as a producer, and his signature mystery-box narrative style is present here, bearing the usual pros and cons. The high-concept setup drives world-building potential that makes me invested in the enigma surrounding the bright-light cosmic anomaly and the Twilight Zone-like collision-between-two-eras angle. But Mitchell isn’t interested in diving into exposition since he likes to keep his story vague, figuring that less is more would maintain a better sense of mystique. And yet, doing so makes the overall narrative feel structurally hollow in places, and if it weren’t for Hathaway and McGregor’s on-screen interplay and the high-stakes dinosaur-heavy thrills alongside Mitchell’s assured pace from the second act onwards, The End of Oak Street would be a total bust.

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The End of Oak Street opens in theaters nationwide on August 14, 2026.