‘The End of Oak Street’ Review: 80s Suburbia Faces a Prehistoric Apocalypse
A troubled family trapped in their neighborhood battles evolving creatures as reality fractures, forcing them to reconcile before the outside world collapses completely.
Released in 2014, It Follows gradually became a highly influential touchstone in what came to be known as “elevated” or auteur-driven indie horror. Not a genre specialist—his previous feature, The Myth of the American Sleepover, was a low-key indie drama—David Robert Mitchell helped define a strain of horror that felt original, personal, and largely detached from the sequel-driven trends of the time. A few years later he delivered Under the Silver Lake, a more ambitious, equally inspired and flawed work that flopped commercially before settling into its (very much intended) status as a cult film.
The End of Oak Street seems, at first glance, like Mitchell’s attempt to move decisively into more overtly commercial territory. It is, after all, a large-scale action-adventure set in an early-1980s American suburb that, for reasons initially unexplained, begins to be visited by prehistoric creatures that attack its residents and tear through everything in their path. This suburban Jurassic Park—or Jurassic Park by way of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial—is, however, far stranger than its premise suggests. It’s as if Mitchell either couldn’t, or simply chose not to, shed the sense of unease that defines his work. That quality may well work against the film commercially, but it’s precisely what makes it unsettling, elusive, and genuinely intriguing.
The film opens like a classic 1980s production from Steven Spielberg or his Amblin Entertainment banner: a quiet suburb far from the city center, outwardly warm and friendly families concealing private tensions, kids riding bikes down peaceful streets, and the inviting—if deceptive—cordiality of a seemingly more innocent era. The Platt family lives here. Denise (Anne Hathaway) is a housewife secretly writing fiction while hiding from her children that her marriage to Greg (Ewan McGregor) is faltering. He has lost his job but keeps it quiet, claiming his pizza deliveries are just for extra cash. Their children, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery), sense that something isn’t quite right.
As they grapple with these domestic fractures, strange environmental disturbances begin to occur. Sudden flashes of light unsettle them, culminating in a nighttime explosion. By morning, there’s no electricity, no running water—but there are small, roaming creatures that appear prehistoric. And from there, things escalate exactly as you’d expect (especially if you’ve seen the trailer): the creatures grow larger, more dangerous. What begins as a retro-tinged family drama transforms into a survival narrative—and, if you like, a story of remarriage—in which the Platts, trapped within the neighborhood by the very logic of the phenomenon (briefly explained), must evade increasingly monstrous predators devouring everything—and everyone—in their wake.
While the premise is classical, even overtly conventional, there’s something subtly off in the tone, the dialogue, the staging. At times, The End of Oak Street feels less like a contemporary film set in the ’80s than an actual artifact from that era, somehow transplanted into the present. This isn’t just a matter of production design or costumes; it extends to the film’s visual grammar, its narrative construction, and especially its handling of action and suspense. Mitchell favors long, winding takes, eschewing the rapid-fire editing that defines most contemporary genre filmmaking.
It’s the right choice—and it works, provided the viewer tunes into the slightly anachronistic wavelength Mitchell is operating on. Those expecting the pace and syntax of modern action cinema may find themselves frustrated by his approach. Still, the film remains tense and often violent, framed within a retro aesthetic that recalls the Amblin productions of the 1980s. Even its humor—arriving at unexpected moments—feels true to that same lineage.
It doesn’t quite cohere into a great film. The characters never fully develop the conflicts established early on, and the explanation behind the phenomenon feels somewhat arbitrary. Yet The End of Oak Street demonstrates that stepping outside the dominant representational modes of a given era can yield something markedly different from the weekly churn of releases. The film is loaded with digital effects and its creatures are unmistakably CGI-driven, but there’s a classical cinematic spirit—rooted in older traditions—that runs through it. Viewers attuned to that sensibility will likely be the ones who get the most out of the Platt family’s battle for survival.
