Review: 'The End of Oak Street' pits a suburban family against monsters, in a satisfying mix of Spielberg's America and 'Twilight Zone' menace
The suburban horror-thriller “The End of Oak Street” is an efficient machine for delivering shocks with classic storytelling and modern movie technology — and gives a solid cast, led by Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, room to battle monsters like in the good old days.
It’s the early ‘80s — an early reference to Carl Sagan’s 1980 miniseries “Cosmos” is a clue — in a typical Michigan suburb. During a neighborhood block party, we get to know the Platt family: The dad, Greg (McGregor), who’s working odd jobs to augment his income, though it’s clear he’s hiding something beyond his drinking; the mom, Denise (Hathaway), whose writing a novel on the sly inspired by her marital disappointments; daughter Audrey (Maisy Stella), a Cornell-bound science nerd; and Brian (Christian Convery), who accidentally broke another kid’s arm and is trying to dodge that kid’s bullying brother.
Writer-director Brian Robert Mitchell, who made the spookily scary “It Follows” and the head-scratching “Under the Silver Lake,” is going for a specific period here — not just ‘80s suburbia, but the suburban ideal of Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.” He gets the tone and atmosphere just right, no doubt assisted by his producer, longtime Spielberg devotee J.J. Abrams.
Like those movies, a bright light outside sparks the mystery. Brian sees it first, when he’s looking for the family dog, Starbuck. And the after-effects of that light slowly become apparent — that somehow a large chunk of the neighborhood has been cut out from the rest of the city, and plunked down in a land where dinosaurs exist and are on the hunt.
Mitchell stages some chilling scenes of the Platt family and a neighbor girl, Jeannette (Jordan Alexa Davis), dodging the massive creatures and eventually fighting back. (I didn’t realize how satisfying it would be to see Hathaway wielding a shotgun.) And those scenes are interspersed with some genuinely heartbreaking moments of the Platt family desperately trying not to fall apart under the stress of trying to survive.
“The End of Oak Street” also shows another important influence for Mitchell: “The Twilight Zone,” and the way Rod Serling’s classic series could use horror and science-fiction tropes to explore timely stories of human frailty and resilience. You may think the Platt family will survive their ordeal (and I’m not going to confirm or deny your conjecture), but you know they will be changed when it’s over.
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‘The End of Oak Street’
★★★1/2
Opens Friday, August 14, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some strong violent content, bloody images, some strong language and suggestive material. Running time: 99 minutes.