The Dinosaur movie we deserved. Finally we got dinosaurs wreaking havoc across a normal 80s family neighborhood. They really don’t hold back either. This pushed the PG-13 rating to the max and probably was one more ruthless Dino kill scene away from being rated R. The End of Oak Street also showcases some fun new dinosaurs that we aren’t used to seeing from the Jurassic Park/World franchise. I also feel comfortable saying this film is better than any of the Jurassic World films. It does everything with dinosaurs well that Jurassic World wishes it could. Finally a dinosaur movie where it’s not some genetically engineered animal by the government or stumbling upon an island and boom dinosaurs have miraculously been here. This at least takes a fresh (while wacky) approach to how a time warp and crazy space wormhole blips or whatever you want to call it transports an area back in time to when dinosaurs roamed. It’s very out there, but it didn’t feel out of place in this film. It knew what it was trying to do the whole time and I feel like it succeeded in giving us a straight forward reason and story to deliver dinosaur craziness and violence.
I have a hot take… Anne Hathaway is better in this film than any other film she has been in this year. Yes, that includes The Odyssey. That is not a knock on her performance in that film, I think she was the second best performance of the entire movie after Damon, but this is that big of a compliment and a testament to how great she was in this film. Her performance hits every note. Caring mother, struggling wife, survivalist badass, and intellectual when needed. I actually liked the basement author aspect of her character. She was projecting all the things wrong with her life and what her escape was. While she may never have taken action on it, that was eating her up inside and the events of the movie helped her overcome those feelings and band back together with her husband and unite the family. I wasn’t sold on Ewan McGregor at first, he delivers a sort of wimpy and lame husband performance. Then I realized that is exactly what it was going for. It worked. One point I was rolling my eyes as he called out his wife as they fought before the kids jump out the window, but then he ramps it up to a level that was really believable and worked. That is a huge key in this, whether it be him, the kids, or the neighbor, they make their characters really work in the construct of the film.
I can’t say enough about how dangerous and tense every corner and every backyard felt with the dinosaurs when people were outside. There was always a threat and it is something David Robert Mitchell even did with It Follows, and he does it again here. He also has such a great attention to detail, every frame feels important and every sequence or cut to a new scene adds something to the overall environment and universe we are immersed in with this film. We also get a Titanaboa in this film which is awesome. The Spinosaurus was a scary threat. Such an iconic dinosaur it deserved to be menacing like that. I can’t talk about this film though without talking about the awesome Allosaurus sequence. The one shot sequence of them running through yards and drawing its attention only for a scary scene where it almost gets at Denise, but Greg hits it to draw it to him. Seems like they’ll be fine but he knocks it in the head and drops it with a sledgehammer, which is hilarious. Tension breaks, you chuckle a bit, then it grabs him and rips his leg off. Before you can realize what happened it’s eating him in front of his family. Letting them go free because it just wanted its meal. Something sold so well by the Denise and the family as they struggle with what they saw for the rest of the film. It was an awesome shock factor.
The dinosaurs weren’t just like serial killers stalking and killing for sport like in other dinosaur films. This felt like when they went after humans it was purely to feed. Humans just were now part of the food chain. It was interesting how it concluded. Jumping into the wormhole or whatever it was is not how I expecting them to get back, but in the world of this film I’m okay with it. Even more okay with it when you realize Denise made calls to save her husband while her double family got sent to the dinosaurs again. It was a fun ending and movie and we need more of these type of films in the summer. Just another great addition to a historic year in film that 2026 has. This fits right in.
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