The End of Oak Street (Christian Movie Review)
The best dino flick since Spielberg was behind the camera, The End of Oak Street is a lean and efficient thriller, and an effective metaphor about the importance of navigating the challenges of life as a family (even if some surprisingly graphic content gives it a sharper than expected bite for family audiences).
About the Film
Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993) dazzled and terrified audiences in equal measure with its on-screen dinosaurs. Decades later, and the diminishing returns of many lackluster sequels, audiences may feel that it’s finally time to let these prehistoric creatures fade back into extinction. The End of Oak Street attempts to break the Jurassic Park monopoly on dinosaur movies, with an original story that returns the creatures back to their roots as horrifying forces of nature. The best dino flick since Spielberg was behind the camera, The End of Oak Street is a lean and efficient thriller, and an effective metaphor about the importance of navigating the challenges of life as a family (even if some surprisingly graphic content gives it a sharper than expected bite for family audiences).
The End of Oak Street succeeds because it understands what the Jurassic Park series stubbornly refuses to accept: that the cinematic spectacle of on-screen dinosaurs is no longer the same thrilling experience it was back in 1993. While the Jurassic Park films continue to go bigger and throw more and more spectacle on screen, The End of Oak Street wisely goes smaller. Yes, there is still plenty of large-scale carnage, but the film centers the story on the experiences of a single family. The characters feel like living and breathing people, not just a buffet dinner for dinos. In fact, there are no characters that audiences will want to see eaten, which makes the deaths—and there are plenty—carry more weight and horror. It’s a film that celebrates the struggle for life more than the spectacle of death.
The film is reminiscent of A Quiet Place (2018), as a story about a nuclear family unit relying on each other to navigate a chaotic and hostile world. As with that other horror film, the exterior chaos of the world serves as metaphor for the discord and division happening within the home. The parents (with great performances by both Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor) are on the verge of divorce, and the children—already dealing with the awkwardness and confusion of puberty—are watching their safe and familiar world get pulled a part. In church, a preacher would call this “navigating the storms of life.” Only, in this case, the storms happen to include a lot of very hungry dinosaurs.
The family component is important, but a dinosaur movie doesn’t work without its dinos. Unlike the Jurassic Park sequels, which have seemingly lost faith in the terror of its creatures and replaced them with scientifically engineered mutants, The End of Oak Street is (rightly) built on the conviction that dinosaurs are inherently scary. The dinos here are legitimately menacing in ways they haven’t been in years (even if audiences raised on a diet of Spielberg may stubbornly resist their modern feathered and furry appearances). The dinosaurs feel otherworldly and animalistic, frightening creatures of carnal instinct.
None of the action sequences are as clever or come close to the best of what Spielberg pulled off and mostly fall into a pattern of “see a dinosaur and run for your life.” But it works because it emphasizes the raw chaos of the situation. Yes, the story’s concept is outlandish and silly, but the actions within the tale feel believable. Dinosaurs act as dinos presumably world, and people react to them as they surely would—by running!
Based on the marketing material, my expectations for the film were that it would be a sort of “Jurassic Park for families.” But like the characters waking up to find a velociraptor in their backyard, I was a bit surprised. The End of Oak Street is a film about family, but not necessarily one catered to family audiences. The film is PG13 and it earns every bit of that rating, arguably toeing the line of an R-rating. The violence is surprisingly graphic, showcasing some blood and horror in ways that the Jurassic Park films did only sparingly. That the dino-victims are innocent civilians and neighbors make the deaths feel even more unsettling.
None of that is inherently wrong (no film is under an obligation to cater to family audiences), but at times, the film itself feels unclear about its tonal identity and audience. It begins by evoking the 1980s charm of family films like E.T. but later features jarring moments like a character declaring “Is that a f—ing dinosaur?!”, or a prolonged scene of two dinosaurs in the unmistakable act of mating. Add in some very shoehorned nods to LGBTQ romance between young characters, and some compelling spiritual threads left too unresolved to be meaningful (which some Christins may even take as mockery), and the overall experience of the film may be more perilous than some family audiences might desire.
In the end, despite some rougher edges, The End of Oak Street is a fun adventure that doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s goofy and riddled with genre tropes and clichés, but it’s consistently entertaining. The film works by keeping things simple: introduce some sympathetic characters, quickly throw them into dangerous and thrilling situations, have them learn some wholesome life lessons along the way, and do it all within a crisp and tidy 1:39h runtime. Dinos may no longer rule the earth, but with enough heart and wholesome themes to complement its silly spectacle and action, The End of Oak Street proves that they still have the power to rule a movie theater.
For Consideration
On the Surface—(Profanity, Sexual content, violence, etc.).
Language: At least one very clearly articulated F-word, as well as a steady offering of other profanities (“s—“, “d—“, “a—”, etc.).
Violence: While the film is not a gore-fest by any means, its violence occasionally is graphic and bloody. The worst of the violent moments are often concealed from view in various ways, but corpses are shown covered in blood or being nibbled on by dinosaurs. A character has a limb bitten off and we see the bloody stump.
Sexuality: A teenage boy is shown at night under his covers with a flashlight reading a 1980s version of a Playboy magazine, featuring a woman in relatively modest attire. Two dinosaurs are shown in the act of sex, as the characters stand and watch, and even pose for a picture in front of them. While never explicitly established, the daughter is heavily implied to be attracted to girls. She and another young girl (included in the story seemingly only for this reason), are implied to be romantically attracted to each other (despite the one said to attend a private Catholic school).
Other: There are several comments made about God and faith. A man expresses his faith that God won’t allow them to die, but he is chided by his wife for the fact that he only goes to church on Christmas and Easter. Two young characters talk about faith, with one saying she doesn’t believe in God, and the other (implied to be Catholic) expressing that sometimes she doesn’t either.
Engage The Film
Family and Faith During Chaotic Times
The dino-centric chaos in the film unfolds as a metaphor for divorce and the domestic tension that comes with the breakdown of the family unit. When the film begins, the visuals have a soft and idyllic glow, like a Norman Rockwell painting come to life. It all feels artificial and too perfect—because it is. Despite the charming outside appearance of domestic bliss—a happy family enjoying a community barbecue—it’s clear that not all is as it appears. The couple’s marriage is on the ropes, the result of years of decayed and lost trust. In a sense, the film’s concept—of a familiar world tossed into unexpected and violent chaos —works as a reflection of the children’s emotional turmoil. To return home requires the family to come back together and rediscover the love they share.
While not as central as family, there’s also a recurrent theme of faith. Some Christians may find the film’s discussion of Christianity and faith dismissive or irreverent, but it’s arguably the natural way characters would talk in such a situation. There is authenticity to a man, faced with protecting his family during challenging circumstances, turning toward faith, or of a Christian girl, following the tragic loss of her parents, questioning (but not outright rejecting) God’s existence. The fault of the film is perhaps that these intriguing spiritual conversations are simply not explored enough. Even so, the ending of the film does give some validation for the husband’s faith or at least leaves the door open for such an interpretation.
The End of Oak Street begins as a deconstruction of the quaint portrait of a conservative American family, tempering the idealism with a hefty dose of realism. Yet, by the end, the film ultimately affirms many of the foundational pillars of that portrait. The film challenges the glossy and dishonest wrapping, but it affirms the truth that it is family and faith that keep us rooted and serve as our source of strength as we navigate a broken and hostile world.
