The End of Oak Street

September 4 – 10

Fri Sept 4 – 3:30 & 7:00 pm
Sat Sept 5 – 7:00 pm
Sun Sept 6 – 1:30 & 7:00 pm
Mon Sept 7 – 7:00 pm
Tues Sept 8 – 7:00 pm
Wed Sept 9 – 3:30 ONLY
Thurs Sept 10 – 1:30 & 7:00 pm LAST SHOW

Rated PG – 1hr 39min
Mystery / Thriller / Action

After a mysterious cosmic event rips Oak Street from suburbia and transports their neighborhood to someplace unknown, the Platt family soon discovers that their very survival depends on them sticking together as they navigate their now unrecognizable surroundings. Because it is set in 1982 and involves an American nuclear family facing extraordinary perils, David Robert Mitchell’s new film is bound to be compared to that decade’s finest Hollywood action fare, especially Steven Spielberg’s.

The handsome couple, Denise and Greg Platt (Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor), appear to anchor a picture-perfect unit, with their well-behaved children, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery), and a rambunctious dog, Starbuck (played by Brisket and Buzz). Then one night, a bright light and an earthquake-like tremor upend their world, and they wake to find exotic flora that went extinct millions of years ago and a range of prehistoric beasties. Some of them peacefully chomp on grass. Others want to chomp on anything that moves, including the Platts. We are eventually given an explanation, but it is so sparse as to be comically pro forma. The movie is not for those who require a rationale for the irrational.

The world was already ending before the dinosaurs arrived. That’s nifty shorthand for the headspace of the Platt family in David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street, the unfortunate protagonists who one night see their entire suburb warped back to a time when creatures like the Spinosaurus and Stegosaurus reigned supreme. Mitchell’s film features all of the Cretaceous carnage you’d expect and want, but it’s the type of ambitious blockbuster that excites not just due to the blood it draws on-screen (of which there’s copious amounts) but for how it cuts deep into the interior lives of its characters, contextualizing its thrills in life’s relatable doldrums. This isn’t a film that sees the problems of its characters as something to speed-run past to get to the dino munching, but instead anchors its vicious spectacle in earnest human drama.

When we first meet the Platt family–parents Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor) and their children Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery)–they’re a family hurtling towards dissolution. Despite their idyllic life–a bright, effervescent filter bathes the Flowervale suburb in a kind of sickly gold–there are secrets that they unsuccessfully hide from each other. It is in this context that they awake to find that they’re in a new time period, having to put aside their conflicts to help each other survive.

The End of Oak Street is a story about the secrets in our homes, the bloodshed that’s latent in our paradises; about our pride meeting and subsequently being torn asunder by the apocalypse. It’s also the most thrilling dinosaur movie in ages and an ode to the life and sacrifices of dads (the film is dedicated to Mitchell’s father). The fact that this film can make space for all these facets of identity to breathe and move makes a movie miracle worth warping to time and time again.