AUGUST 16, 2026
GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)
Not that it matters, but I never really loved It Follows as much as most of my peers, to the extent that I never even bothered to see David Robert Mitchell's followup, Under the Silver Lake. It's fine, but it's one of those movies where once the concept was explained it kind of just repeated the same moves until a runtime was met instead of getting more interesting. And outside of whatever he contributed to Armageddon (he's one of the few of its dozens of writers that actually got credited) I can't say I love JJ Abrams' movie work all that much either. But somehow, this unlikely pairing paid off with The End of Oak Street, which combines Mitchell's off kilter sense of humor and almost preternatural ability to get the set/prop details right in his settings with Abrams'... well, his obsession with ripping off Spielberg.
Now, the plot, about a normal suburban neighborhood being overrun by dinosaurs that were sucked in through a wormhole (or was the neighborhood itself sucked into dinosaur times?) naturally lends itself to a lot of shots of people looking at something terrifying and/or awe-inspiring off screen, which is a standard Spielberg move but doesn't necessarily *belong* to him. But even the setting of the film lets you know it's intentional, as its set in 1982, the year of Poltergeist and ET. Our hero family, led by Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, live in a suburban town that might as well feature the Freelings or Taylors living next door*, and they even have the same kind of semicircle breakfast nook the latter family had. Plus there's some dad issues stuff (McGregor is depicted as a bit of a loser; Hathaway's character even writes a novel to work out her fantasies of leaving him), and since any dinosaur movie will undoubtedly evoke memories of Jurassic Park, you are left with a movie that might even inspire a young child to read the credits carefully to see if this was indeed an Amblin project.
(Some minor spoilers follow!)
But you know what we never saw in any of the seven Jurassic Park movies? DINO SEX! About an hour into the film, Hathaway and McGregor are sneaking their way through the neighborhood looking for their kids (who ran off in search of the family dog, and given how much shit poor Evil Dead Burn took, I assure you that the pooch makes it, but some cats do not) when they see two brachiosaurs (or something along those lines; Alan Grant I am not) mating up against a house. Since they're distracted and not carnivores anyway, Hathaway finds it funny enough to insist McGregor poses for a Polaroid, in a moment that helps kickstart them reigniting their fading love for one another. It's a very silly moment, but I loved it. Normally they'd just have one save the other and boom, problems are solved, but the idea that two people on the verge of divorce could reconnect again over a dinosaur getting railed against their (dead?) neighbor's house is incredibly funny and weirdly touching.
The other thing that won me over is how R rated this PG-13 movie is. In addition to two F-bombs (one being hilarious, the other in an emotional outburst from Hathaway to her kid that kind of broke my heart as a parent), there are a lot of brutal deaths and gory injuries, including a major character having half their leg bitten off. The Jurassics usually have one (1) pretty gnarly death (shoutout to the babysitter in Jurassic World!) and keep the rest rather tame but there's quite a few here that are seen in all the glory you'd want. It's also kind of genuinely scary in spots? There's a sequence involving a Titanoboa (giant ass snake) slithering its way through the family home, and it is a legitimately terrifying moment when it makes its first strike. And since we see (random) kids killed early on, there's a genuine sense of "no one is fully safe" that is missing from the Jurassics and similar films that helped keep this one engaging throughout its (hallelujah!) 1:40 runtime.
On the other hand, it can be very stupid at times. The characters frequently seem to forget about the dangers all around them and have heart to heart conversations (or arguments) without looking around, and for some reason despite the availability of cars everywhere, after their own is destroyed they seem to assume driving is a bad idea and they keep running around in open areas where a dino could get them. Even when they see a potential rescue point in the distance, they decide to proceed on foot, despite knowing from a previous encounter that there's a time limit on the thing (explaining what would be too spoilery). Hathaway's character can be abrasive as well; when McGregor tries to calm his children down by telling them it'll be OK, she gets angry at him for giving them hope? And it happens multiple times! I'm not one of those people who need the characters to be honorable and good for 100% of their screen time, but I feel she goes a bit too far into "unpleasant" mode on too many occasions, and it's only my affinity for the actor that kept me from rooting for the dinos. If it was Sarah Paulson or some reality star playing the role, I'd be BEGGING for her gruesome exit.
Otherwise it's just a good, breezy time at the movies, perfect for August when you're probably just there to get some A grade air conditioning and don't want to think too much. The plot could have been an Asylum movie but Mitchell and Abrams, along with the cast, gave it the A-grade treatment. Plus it functions as the sequel to Jurassic Park Fallen Kingdom that the woeful Dominion failed to deliver (re: dinosaurs being on the mainland, specifically suburbia), so I appreciated that. I also appreciated that it teased out the appearance of the dinos (going in blind would be kind of awesome, because at first it's just "something big"), especially since they have feathers and such so if they showed up right away it might look kind of silly since we are so used to the JP versions (and in turn, if they delayed the appearance just to show us what we've seen before, it'd be like "Why?"). So some script stuff aside - and the weirdest continuity error I've ever seen involving McGregor's pizza delivery sign on the car - it's exactly what I hoped for when I heard the premise, and something I'll happily throw on from time to time just to enjoy the spectacle of Anne Hathaway stabbing a dinosaur repeatedly. Bonus: my kid really liked it!
What say you?
*honestly, the movie has so many random background characters being chased and/or eaten by dinos that I'm kind of stunned the VFX guys didn't intentionally style a group of their virtual dummies to look like either family as a gag.
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