The End of Oak Street

I like this particular poster for The End of Oak Street. At a glance, it's just a typical drone shot of a suburban street. Then you notice some damaged roofs, scarred lawns, and a footprint... 

Film makers have always wanted to contrive ways to bring dinosaurs and humans together on screen. Especially if the odds can be evened out a bit; after all, dinosaurs are going to lose in the end if we humans have any access to modern weaponry. In the early days, when not every last bit of the earth had been explored, the standard approach was to find dinosaurs surviving in remote spots, 'lost worlds' etc.

Moving on - and taking inspiration I think from a famous Ray Bradbury short story - Hollywood (and other science fiction writers) would often employ time travel as a way to meet dinosaurs, usually by going back in time, but sometimes by bringing them into ours. Science moves on, and as genetic science and awareness of DNA came into prominence, Michael Crichton did the inevitable and wrote a book about recreating dinosaurs from DNA found in the blood of prehistoric mosquitoes trapped in amber. There are so many flaws with this idea, mainly that DNA degrades over much less time than dinosaurs have been extinct, but since Steven Spielberg turned Crichton's book into the spectacular Jurassic Park, dinosaurs have never looked back.

The End of Oak Street hits the spot very well. After so many films in the Jurassic Park franchise, and imitators, we needed something a little different. Following newer ideas in science (well, quite fuzzy ones in this case to be honest), here we have some kind of dimensional 'bubble' swapping a spherical chunk of prehistoric Earth with a section of modern American suburban streets. I didn't catch the buzz word 'quantum', but I bet it was in there somewhere.

Sadly the novelty vanishes as we focus on the protagonists, the stereotypical American family with 'problems'. Dad Ewan McGregor hasn't told them he's been laid off, Mom Anne Hathaway is writing about a mother who's yearning to leave her husband, kids know all too well. We see various neighbours who are plot useful, such as the aggressively territorial next door who naturally will be picked off by pterodactyls. The lonely newcomer girl who will eventually pal up with the oldest kid, a daughter (yes, that does hint at a 'modern' twist). And there are turns by a few veteran actors which add to the mix. But the family's storyline is fairly predictable, and the writing a bit clunky I thought.

The dinosaurs themselves are quite a departure from the world of Jurassic Park. One problem that franchise still hasn't satisfactorily resolved, is to do with the palaeontological discovery that dinosaurs could be quite hairy, or I should say, covered in feathers. So they're quite odd. I suspect further research will provide further corrections to what we know about their appearance. Never mind. The main thing you need to know, is that these dinosaurs are really nasty. There's no cuddliness, no suggestion that we might get along with certain 'hero' dinosaurs. These ones see you and straightaway want to eat you. 

Also, we don't have that compunction we see in the Jurassic Park films to 'know about' dinosaurs, to identify the species and so on (they were often wrong anyway). In Oak Street, there are several weird creatures which aren't dinosaurs at all. One which comes into the house seems to have been designed purely to give the (very effective) terrors.

It's for the kids really. People like me are always going to have nagging thoughts about practicalities. One thing which gets little attention here is how they're going to run out of essentials very quickly - no power, no water, the fridge doesn't work of course... It's not a survival flick. In those, people immediately loot the local stores. Though to be fair, there are pressing matters like giant voracious beasts everywhere.

If there's one thing which was majorly distracting for me in The End of Oak Street, it was their sheer stupidity in the face of danger. One sees this all too often in action adventures, of whatever genre. I may be naive on this, but I still think that most people have a survival instinct, and a) will heighten their senses in these situations, and notice a huge predator approaching them before it gets too close, and b) will run as fast as they can, avoid rushing into a tight dead end space, rather than rooting themselves to the spot for some performative screaming. I spent a fair amount of this film wishing on the speedy end of most of the characters.

But on balance, I had fun. I hope it remains its own thing, with no sequel, and doesn't turn into another increasingly lacklustre franchise.