Publication Date: 08-14-2026

The End of Oak Street (2026) review

Dir. David Robert Mitchell

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★½

The End of Oak Street begins earnestly enough, suggesting its setup will take on a life akin to Stranger Things-meets-Jurassic Park. It shows teenage siblings, Brian (Christian Convery) and Audrey (Maisy Stella), interacting with their friends in their quaint little subdivision and engaging in their own little misadventures. And then a funny thing happens. David Robinson Mitchell’s script decides to make the siblings’ parents, Greg (Ewan McGregor) and Denise (Anne Hathaway), and their rocky marriage the focal point of the movie. Their souring attitudes towards one another and morose dispositions suck the life out of the movie, which should be a high-energy romp with dinosaurs.

The familial melodrama begins during a neighborhood block party in the family’s town of Flowervale. Greg is trying to leave the festivities to go deliver pizzas. This upsets Audrey, who has been retreating downstairs every night to write her novel — about a woman leaving her family and starting a new life. Divorce seems imminent. The papers might even get served in the next day. That is, Flowervale is rocked with a power outage that shuts off their water and takes their phonelines down with it. Enter dinosaurs, who emerge from the sudden appearance of a forest on the outskirts of the town, effectively surrounding the area by hulking stegosauruses, T. Rexes, and velociraptors.

Mitchell — whose background includes the critically acclaimed It Follows — and cinematographer Michael Gioulakis stage a couple dynamic, dino-led sequences involving swift tracking shots that reminded me of Tremors. One involves the initial discovery of a dinosaur by Greg; another has the whole family trying to escape certain danger. It is quite fun to witness dinosaurs stomping around the suburbs. After so many lame Jurassic World movies, Mitchell’s movie at least gives us something involving dinos that feels much fresher than anything we’ve seen in a couple decades. Visually, it looks like an off-kilter Twilight Zone episode.

There is a concerted effort to dial up the Spielberg/Amblin vibes too. After all, J. J. Abrams is the executive producer, and he showed his hand in Super 8. The story is set in 1982, there are a couple pointed needle-drops (“Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” “Turning Japanese“), era-specific furniture, and surely story beats and characters that will make you recall other 80s works. None of this is a real problem, but it does ring hollow when Brian and Audrey take a backseat to their moody parents. The beginning of the film suggests that we will follow this dinosaur invasion from the perspective of both of the kids’ friend groups. We learn that Brian has drawn the ire of a local bully after inadvertently injuring his younger brother. This plot-point comes to a head later on, but is so inconsequential that it has no bearing on the plot.

Let me clear that McGregor and Hathaway — who has flexed her creature feature/fantasy muscles in the past in movies like Colossal — both turn in competent performances. The issue is their consistently combative energy, and how Mitchell’s script intently focuses on it to the detriment of what could’ve been a looser, less rigid narrative.

The End of Oak Street rebounds with a surprisingly dark and emotionally stirring climax. Despite some dawdling by the characters and plot conveniences abound, Mitchell arrives at a surprisingly sweet conclusion. That almost made me forget that while the family dog Starbuck can outrun, outwit, and protect himself from dinosaurs, we see multiple cats get consumed within seconds of appearing on-screen. Forget stunt casting or diversity initiatives, this is the kind of crap that offends me to my core.

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Anne Hathaway, Christian Convery, Maisy Stella, Jordan Alexa Davis, and P. J. Byrne. Directed by: David Robert Mitchell.