The End of Oak Street

David Robert Mitchell’s undervalued last film Under the Silver Lake starkly divided opinion, but there’s little chance of his latest feature creating such discord. The End of Oak Street has nothing on its mind beyond giving multiplex audiences a good time, and it often achieves this very effectively, but it never feels like we’re watching a director giving us the best he’s got. In fact, although it was written and directed by Mitchell, the most obvious fingerprints on this Amblin-tinged, 1980s-set adventure are those of producer J.J. Abrams.

A clunky first act details the simmering marital tension between Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor) Platt. The film only hits its stride when the Platts wake up to find their neighbourhood has been transported to a prehistoric era, and dinosaurs are roaming the streets. Mitchell showed in It Follows that he knows how to craft tension, and he stages some terrifically tense and witty sequences here as the Platts try to evade these hungry beasts. There are stretches of the film that flow beautifully, and he pulls off some genuine surprises, although the impact of the film’s biggest shock is undermined later on.

There are enough fun set-pieces to elevate this pleasingly tight 100-minute romp beyond mediocrity, but it’s hardly likely to stick in the memory. The writing is too arbitrary and the characters too basic (despite Hathaway’s fine work) for it to have any weight. It’s a welcome return for Mitchell, but one hopes he’ll find a more idiosyncratic outlet for his undoubted talents next time around.