Introduction
From the moment the soundtrack starts in David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street, I felt a certain sense of nostalgia. This movie didn’t make me feel like it was 2026. It made me feel like it was 1986. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought 22-year-old me was sitting in the Willowbrook Mall theater watching this film for the first time. It reminded me that much of the wonderful summer movies from that era. The End of Oak Street is a great summer popcorn film, a little Spielbergian, with a touch of Joe Dante thrown in for good measure. More than anything, it feels like a loving tribute to the movies of that era without simply copying them.
Synopsis
The camera gently drifts in over the Oak Street sign, accompanied by wonderfully sweet music that immediately reminded me of E.T. or Gremlins. We are introduced to the Platt family: Greg (Ewan McGregor) and Denise (Anne Hathaway) and their two teenagers, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery). They appear to be the perfect nuclear family of 1980s middle-class America.
Yet Greg and Denise’s marriage isn’t quite as perfect as they would like everyone to believe, despite their efforts to mask the problems. Then something strange begins happening in their neighborhood. At night, mysterious flashing lights appear, leaving bizarre aftereffects behind, until everything finally comes to a head and the entire Oak Street neighborhood is transported somewhere else.
Discussion
As soon as we get the film’s “we’re not in Kansas anymore” moment, The End of Oak Street turns into a roller coaster ride. Greg and Denise will do anything necessary to protect their children, and the movie becomes something like Jurassic Park meets Gremlins. There is so much to enjoy here, but what really makes it work is that the Platt family feels fully formed before everything goes crazy.
Denise is an unhappy housewife who is novelizing her utter dissatisfaction with life. Greg, the struggling breadwinner, is hiding just how badly he is struggling. Brian has accidentally caused a peer to be injured and is now frightened about what might happen to him. Audrey wants to go to Cornell but is now beginning to realize that her ambitions may have to get smaller. Every single member of this family is struggling with something. Yet they genuinely love and care for one another. That comes through in all of their interactions and that foundation becomes important once the film starts putting them through hell.
The effects are also great. I particularly enjoyed that Mitchell seems to have taken more recent scientific discoveries into account when showing us dinosaurs that look somewhat different from the versions we have traditionally seen in movies. I recently visited a Tyrannosaurus exhibit that presented dinosaurs as having something other than the familiar leathery skin we have become accustomed to seeing. Some may have been covered in something resembling hair but was actually closer to feathers.
The End of Oak Street plays with some of those ideas, and everything looks terrific. Once the big turn in the story occurs, the film really does feel more like something made circa 1986 than 2026. It takes the almost Rockwellian existence of the Platt family and drops it into something resembling the terror of Jaws. Mitchell does a wonderful job balancing the recognizable reality of this family with the increasingly bizarre science-fiction horror happening around them.
Further Analysis
I also enjoyed the fact that exactly what happened isn’t really the focus of the movie. The Platts are probably just a peripheral story in a much larger event. We never get a giant explanation of exactly what happened or why it happened, because that isn’t what matters to these characters. Survival matters. Protecting one another matters. And, if possible, getting home matters.
The movie was produced by J.J. Abrams, and it crossed my mind more than once while watching the film, how much The End of Oak Street resembles Super 8 and the three Cloverfield movies. I could easily have imagined this movie being called Cloverfield: The End of Oak Street. I’m grateful it isn’t. Attaching that name to it might actually have made people less curious about what Mitchell has created here, and moviegoers would be missing out on a wonderful film.
Performances
I haven’t even talked about how good Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway are in their roles. McGregor’s Greg is just a normal, loving guy. He is incredibly human and believable, a genuinely nice man who doesn’t want to hurt anyone, even when doing so might come at a tremendous cost to himself. McGregor never tries to turn Greg into an action hero. He remains a father and husband desperately trying to keep his family alive, and McGregor is wonderful.
I’m starting to wonder if 2026 is the year of Anne Hathaway. This is her fourth film of the year, and she still has another movie to come. She is fantastic as Denise. Denise may be the most vulnerable character in the film. She has serious issues with her day-to-day life and her marriage, yet she loves her family and loves her husband despite his flaws and weaknesses.
Ultimately, I think Denise is the strongest member of the family, even more so than McGregor’s Greg. She displays the best qualities of all of them when things are at their worst. I went into the movie wondering if Hathaway might mail this performance in a little. Nope. She’s great. In fact, I think she is a better actor than I sometimes give her credit for, and her body of work this year has been a terrific demonstration of her range and depth.
Conclusion
The End of Oak Street is simply a fun movie. It reminded me of a time when a summer movie could give you a family you cared about, some laughs, some scares, great creatures, a little wonder and a whole lot of adventure. For a couple of hours, it made 2026 feel like 1986 again. Buy everyone some popcorn and a soda, settle into your seats and enjoy the ride.
