High concept doesn’t always equal high quality – we like sharks! We like tornadoes! Job done! But in this instance “dinosaurs in the suburbs” works a dream. It’s a loving homage to Steven Spielberg and The End of Oak Street less rips off Jurassic Park, ET and Jaws and more relies on audiences’ love for those films and the nostalgia they are imbued with to bring a fresh take to the ‘Spielburbia’ sub-genre.
In the hands of director David Robert Mitchell, who made breakout horror hit It Follows, this is a moving, funny and thrilling family-friendly 12A romp, which still has a murky dark heart at the centre.
Set (initially) in 1982, Oak Street lies in a friendly neighbourhood of kids on bikes, perfect lawns sullied by naughty dogs, school bullies and hot new high-schoolers. The Platt family – mum Denise (Anne Hathaway), dad Greg (Ewan McGregor) and kids Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery), with rescue dog Starbuck, are ostensibly the perfect unit, but beneath the potato salad and street parties, they’re not.
Greg has lost his job, Denise is writing a book about running away, Brian has a school mate out to get him and Audrey is lost in the stars. The Stranger Things vibes come hard, until one night a storm and intense light flashes shut off the power and the water.
Keen to investigate and find their missing dog, the family discover a circular region of about two miles has been transported to a whole new era. Oak Street and vicinity are suddenly plopped in the centre of a prehistoric forest, packed with dinos, geysers and tropical foliage.
There is carnage. But there isn’t much gore, so while the (literal) head count is high, this isn’t as mean-spirited in its kills as Jurassic World, while the family is resourceful, sympathetic and believable.
This is fairly kid-friendly fare, with most of the deaths happening off screen, at a distance or focused on characters we haven’t met, although there is one sensational and genuinely shocking moment with a main player. The humour here is gentle but endearing too, from an early sequence with a massive dinosaur poo the Platts’ neighbour blames on the kids, to a pair of dinos getting it on, on top of a house.
It’s not cruel, but the peril is still real and the tension palpable, including one extended sequence with an eel-like creature we first see hiding out in a swimming pool and later slinking its way through the window of a house where the gang are holed up.
The sound design here is exceptional, the eel oozing its way between floors in our peripheral vision as the team raid medicine cupboards and forage for food, unaware of the ginormous pallid snake-like creature preparing to strike.
The dinos here aren’t the prehistoric A-List – there’s no T-Rex or velociraptor troop – but that feels very deliberate and gives scope for exciting newcomers (props to the orange and purple alligator-beasts who can stand on two legs, and the horde of giant spiky tortoises).
Produced by JJ Abrams and Bad Robot, this is very good-natured stuff but it’s also colourful, pacy and slick and, at 1hr 40, it actually feels short – unusual for a modern movie.
Though it owes a debt to the summer big-guns of yore, this isn’t actually blockbuster scale – despite studio backing, The End of Oak Street has indie vibes. Never more so, in fact, than at the end, where ambiguities mean this could be sweet, happy and satisfying, or incredibly dark and disturbing. Take it as you will. Roarsome.
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The End of Oak Street is released in cinemas on Friday 14 August.
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