The End of Oak Street
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Where goes the neighborhood....
There's a lot of fun to be had at THE END OF OAK STREET! With serious "Poltergeist" and "Gremlins" vibes, this one dropped me right back into the Spielberg produced classics of the early 80's.
The most mainstream flick yet from crazy talented Writer/Director David Robert Mitchell, this one is an absolute blast loaded with fun, some serious surprises and powerful dramatic moments.
But it's mostly just pure FUN.
It's July 11th, 1982 and The Platt family is enjoying a classic neighborhood get together. Mom Denise (Anne Hathaway) seems to be having a good time, but you sense brewing tension with her husband Greg (Ewan McGregor) that doesn't go unnoticed by their two teen kids, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery). If you want to see how great casting can elevate a film, check out these four actors, each of whom carve out characters with secrets, deep emotions and a sense of survival that's about to be tested.
Echoing the Freeling family in "Poltergeist", they live in a sprawling suburbia in a picture perfect neighborhood primed to experience some seriously crazy events. In the middle of the night, bright lights and a strong wind blow into Brian's room.
Bizarre things begin to pop around the neighborhood that I won't divulge here.
The following night, that light stays longer and the sounds emerging from it are wild.
They wake up in the middle of a prehistoric landscape.
It's a great concept and it's beautifully executed, making you think about all the plumbing, phone and power lines that would no longer work if your entire neighborhood suddenly relocated wayyyyyyyy back in time.
Don't look for any detailed analysis of what's happened, Mitchell is here for fast paced fun and he doesn't have time to hold your hand Michael Crichton style and explain the science to you when a couple references to Carl Sagan and wormholes will suffice just fine, thank you very much.
What happens to a family on the brink of collapse when their world is turning upside down?
Hathaway is terrific. Her anger is palpable, her disappointment looking down into that basement is tangible, as are her action skills running from some big, bad-ass dinosaurs.
McGregor matches her as a man committed to doing what's right, even if it might not be in the exact method that his strong willed wife desires.
Stella and Convery are excellent as the two teen kids, delivering solid performances in the face of jaw dropping events. Convery's so good he even escaped my "you idiot, why are you doing that to save a dog" curse. He's got to save his pup Starbuck at all cost. No it's not a coffee shop reference, as that "Battlestar Galactica' poster glimpsed on his bedroom wall will attest.
The special effects are terrific and the sound design by Paula Fairfield (Game of Thrones) is fantastic. She and her team fill the theater with some seriously scary surround sound as rampaging dinos of every variety rampage into suburbia.
The music score by Michael Giacchino is wall-to-wall and one of his absolute best, heightening the thrills, the shocks and the suspense. The man wrote the music for everything from "The Batman" and "Star Trek" to last week's "SpiderMan: Brand New Day" and he's at the top of his game here.
The production design by Maya Shimoguchi (The Batman, Minority Report) is excellent, dropping you deep into both 1982 and a Jurassic rain forest that suddenly share the same zip code.
If you've seen Mitchell's brilliant 2014 debut, "It Follows", you already know that the man can build some incredible celluloid suspense. He takes it to another level here, showing a Spielberg touch in several of the scenes, especially when a giant prehistoric sea snake of incredible size and girth pours itself into the Pratt's home during the finale.
You could cut the audience tension with a knife in our preview showing. It's a fantastic sequence that will likely become one of Mitchell's trademarks.
Just when you think this is all fun, a tragic and horrifyingly real death-by-dinosaur rocks you and the film. From that moment through the film's satisfying ending, you know that Mitchell is playing for keeps.
Producer JJ Abrams delivers another winner that kept me smiling and on the edge of my seat once that wormhole fires up its magic. What a ride!
THE END OF OAK STREET delivers plenty of end of summer fireworks, dino thrills and mystery, earning a very enjoyable A.
What an absolute blast.
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