The End of Oak Street, a new sci-fi adventure thriller starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, has won acclaim from Rotten Tomatoes critics.
Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell (It Follows) and produced by J.J. Abrams, The End of Oak Street opens in theaters on Friday. Set in the early 1980s in the fictional Detroit suburb of Flowervale, Mich., Denise (Hathaway) and Greg (McGregor) Platt are living a seemingly perfect, idyllic life with a teen daughter (Maisy Stella) and pre-teen son (Christian Convery). Beneath the surface, though, there’s trouble in the marriage.
Suddenly, though, the Platts need to band together in a fight for survival when a cosmic event opens up a time portal and absorbs their entire neighborhood, transporting it back to prehistoric times. Before too long, dinosaurs start roaming Flowervale and wreaking havoc with every human they see. As the neighborhood begins to crumble, the Platts find hope to get back to their place in time in one piece.
As of Friday, The End of Oak Street has earned an 85% “fresh” critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer based on 185 reviews, while audiences have given it a 71% “fresh” Popcornmeter score based on 100-plus verified user ratings. RT’s Critics Consensus and Audience Summary are still pending.
What Are Individual Critics Saying About ‘The End Of Oak Street’?
Kyle Smith of the Wall Street Journal is among the top critics on RT who give The End of Oak Street a “fresh” score, writing, “The director, David Robert Mitchell, dismisses plausibility and sticks to a refreshingly modest goal: dumb fun. Once it gets going, Oak Street makes the audience squirm, scream and laugh for nearly an hour, and I had a great time.”
Detroit News critic Adam Graham also gives the film a “fresh” score, writing on RT, “The End of Oak Street knows the dinosaurs don’t matter, it’s the people running from who are important. That craft and care makes all the difference.”
Jake Coyle of The Associated Press refers to Steven Spielberg’s famed production company in his “fresh” review on RT, writing, “Much of the pastiche delight of the 1980s-set The End of Oak Street … is how it absorbs an Amblin-style blockbuster spirit and conjures, without winking irony or belabored homage, a summer thrill ride seemingly designed for the drive-in.”
Barry Hertz of the Globe and Mail also deems the film fresh, writing in his RT review summary, “The End of Oak Street wisely plays it straight and smart — or at least smart enough to know that there are great joys to be had in dumb fun done well.”
Kristy Puchko of Mashable is among the top critics on RT who give The End of Oak Street a “rotten” score, writing, “If you’re looking for carefree summer fun, look elsewhere. The End of Oak Street is not fun. It’s bleak, brutal, and ultimately infuriating.”
Amy Nicholson of the Los Angeles Times isn’t a fan of The End of Oak Street, either, writing in her “rotten” RT review summary, “How great if this type of four-quadrant filmmaking didn’t have to cosplay as a begotten relic — if it could take courage from these dinosaurs and thrive in our modern times.”
Odie Henderson of the Boston Globe also gives the film a “rotten” score, writing on RT, “There are so many nods to movies like E.T., Poltergeist, and Jurassic Park that I refuse to call this pastiche an homage; this is an unabashed rip-off. Mitchell commits shameless theft of better movies.”
‘The End Of Oak Street’ – A Mini-Review
Rotten Tomatoes critics largely got their collective viewpoint right with The End of Oak Street. Originally titled Flowervale (which oddly seems reminiscent of Cloverfield), The End of Oak Street is a pleasantly surprising summer movie romp that playfully finds inspiration in not only the works of Steven Spielberg, but one of his protégés, J.J. Abrams, who, not coincidentally, is the film’s lead producer.
In short, writer-director David Robert Mitchell’s skillfully made picture feels like Jurassic Park meets E.T. meets Super 8 meets Cloverfield, all of which were crafted by Spielberg and Abrams (and for younger audiences, you can throw the Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things into the mix).
As such, The End of Oak Street is far from original, but the idea of those worlds colliding feels refreshing after what seems like endless, repetitive trips back to Jurassic Park/Jurassic World.
What especially feels refreshing is that the film is a throwback to the films of the 1980s, which will no doubt have audiences feeling nostalgic about those much simpler times. Mitchell nails the time period and tone of said period, combined with a unique enough story that inventively weaves in T-Rexes, Pterodactyls and a variety of other deadly dinosaurs, along with a terrific cast led by Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor.
In a weird way, The End of Oak Street could also be considered a tiny homage to Sid & Marty Kroft’s Saturday morning classic Land of the Lost, but a warning to parents, it’s a PG-13 movie that’s not exactly suitable for young kids.