Highly anticipated by fans of offbeat, fantastical fare, The End of Oak Street has been defended by its producer, J.J. Abrams. He swore that this dinosaur invasion would have nothing to do with Steven Spielberg’s body of work.
After scaring audiences with the brilliant and chilling It Follows, and having explored the conspiratorial depths of the solid Under the Silver Lake, director David Robert Mitchell is pushing the dial to a radically different setting. For his return, the filmmaker has assembled a star-studded cast led by Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway. A duo thrust into the heart of a project that openly leans toward The Twilight Zone.
The End of Oak Street tells how a quiet 1980s American suburban town is suddenly catapulted into a spacetime rift. But where it lands, a horde of dinosaurs lives, who will march through the middle of the cul-de-sacs to sow terror and cause as much chaos as the Oak Street trailer promised. And while the presence of these giants evokes the shadow of Jurassic Park, Abrams promises a radically different experience.
The Hunger of Oak Street
In an Empire magazine interview, the grande figurehead J.J. Abrams insisted on killing off any comparisons to the master Spielberg in the cradle. The head of Bad Robot says the audience craves original stories, and highlights the suburban Oak Street setting:
« I think people are hungry for new stories, for original narratives, and for me the undeniable appeal of this project lies in the fact that it unfolds in the suburbs. I love Jurassic films as much as anyone, but those features mostly take place in lush jungles or on distant islands. »
To set itself apart from the prehistoric competition, the film leans entirely on this visual and contextual mismatch between the mundane American daily life and the ferocity of prehistoric wildlife :
« David’s entire approach here rested on juxtaposing a absolutely ordinary suburban family life, with its swings, its ice-cream trucks, its above-ground pools and its school buses, with dinosaurs. If a sliver of you is excited by what you saw in the trailers, I can guarantee the film will deliver on all its promises. »
This geographic tilt toward suburban neighborhoods indeed proves refreshing compared to the tropical-archipelago routine of Universal’s saga. Still, one should keep in mind the totally insane final sequence of The Lost World, where a T-Rex rolled into town, chased dogs, and drank from San Diego pools. The ending of Jurassic World 2 also teased a world overrun by Jurassic creatures, and in that vein, Jurassic World 3 was supposed to really bring it to the screen. Unfortunately, it did not live up to its promises.
Be that as it may, this head-on collision between 80s nostalgia and giant beasts is shaping up as one of the summer’s most intriguing offerings. The date is set, as The End of Oak Street will roll into our cinemas on August 12, 2026.
