The End of Oak Street Review: Dinosaurs, Dysfunction and One Hell of a Good Time

I'm sure there are a lot of ways to screw up a movie about a suburban neighborhood suddenly finding itself surrounded by dinosaurs.

The End of Oak Street avoids the biggest one.

It makes you give a shit about the family before anything starts trying to eat them.

That sounds obvious, but think about how many movies rush through the setup because everybody knows the monsters are what we paid to see. Here, David Robert Mitchell spends real time with the family before their lives go completely insane.

This seems to be a lost art with both the people who make movies and the mindless hordes that devour them.

While watching the movie I'm sad to say it took me a few minutes to realize this movie isn't taking place in modern times. I loved this because it takes away the part of the film that's all too common now of everyone realizing their phone doesn't work and freaking out about that.

When we pick up with the family they are attending a block party of sorts. They make it clear here that this family has more going on than just who's going to cook the hotdogs.

Denise, played by Anne Hathaway, is secretly writing a book based on her own life while insisting that it’s all just a story. Greg, played by Ewan McGregor, is working extra jobs trying to bring in enough money. Their daughter can’t attend the school she wants because the family simply can’t afford it. Their son has his own shit going on, trying to avoid some neighborhood kids because of something he did to one of their brothers.

None of this sounds particularly important when you know dinosaurs are coming. It is though, because by the time everything goes to hell, I was firmly rooting for all four of them.

Hathaway and McGregor are good, which at this point is pretty much par for the course with them both. The kids are good too, although they also continue one of cinema’s oldest traditions: making stupid kid decisions that cause a substantial percentage of the shit hitting the fan.

To be fair, the adults make some pretty dumb decisions too. There were definitely moments where I was sitting there wondering, “Why the hell would you do that?”

Then again, their neighborhood has just been dropped into an impossible situation involving dinosaurs. I’m not entirely sure any of us would be operating at peak decision-making capacity.

Once the movie really kicks into gear, The End of Oak Street becomes a full-blown horror adventure. And yes, it gets scary.

The neighborhood itself is the perfect setting for this. Houses, fences, backyards and garages give the dinosaurs plenty of places to disappear, so when one suddenly comes charging out from between two houses or around a corner, it actually gets you. The movie turns a normal suburban street into a place where you’re constantly waiting for something to jump out.

There are sequences with people running through the neighborhood that are genuinely tense, and a few of the deaths are surprisingly brutal. There were moments where something happened on screen and a hushed silence fell over the crowd.

That kind of silence is always a good sign in a horror movie.

A few of the effects are a little dodgy, but I liked the way the dinosaurs themselves were handled. These things don’t look like theme-park pretty boys polished up for tourists. They look like animals that were ripped straight out of their own time and suddenly dumped into suburbia.

They’re dangerous. They’re unpredictable. And they absolutely should be.

The movie also doesn’t sit you down afterward with a PowerPoint presentation explaining exactly how any of this happened. Thank God. There are breadcrumbs and enough information scattered around that you can start putting together your own idea of what happened and why.

That was enough for me.

Give me something this crazy and keep me entertained, and I don’t need every question answered. My wife, on the other hand, needs the 10-page essay explaining all the hows and whys. We have very different requirements.

There are a couple of moments where I questioned why something happened, but never enough that it hurt the movie for me. I also wish some of the other people in the neighborhood had been developed more. We get to know a couple of them, but with an entire neighborhood caught in this situation, there was room to make a few more of those people matter before the dinosaurs started thinning the herd.

On a side note Steve Winwood is having himself a hell of a good year. This is the second movie I’ve seen this year use “Valerie.” The first was Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, and now here it is again. I’m not complaining. If 2026 wants to become the year Hollywood collectively remembers Steve Winwood, I’m completely fine with that.

Because more than anything else, The End of Oak Street is fun. Really fun. It understands that the dinosaurs are the attraction, but the people are what give the dinosaurs something to threaten. It gives this family enough personality, enough problems and enough time that their survival actually matters.

And when the movie finally gets to its ending, it earns it. What I will say is that I walked out satisfied. The movie had taken this family through absolute hell, and where it leaves them felt right.

By the time those dinosaurs show up, I didn't want to watch a bunch of strangers try to survive. I wanted this family to survive.

The End of Oak Street made me care first, made dinosaurs scary and fun again and gave me one hell of a good time watching everything go completely to shit.

Go see this one in a theater.

Dinosaurs deserve the big screen.