The drama of a marriage teetering towards divorce bumps up against a bigger problem in THE END OF OAK STREET, a rip-snorter of an action flick that asks the question: what would a typical suburban couple do if a pterosaur swooped down on them in their backyard? As played by Ann Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, the couple in question has an emotional immediacy that makes their issues just as riveting as the sudden onslaught of prehistoric creatures, and that is saying a lot. It provides a compelling underpinning to the survival marathon that arises when a random part of suburbia wakes up to a nightmare.
The couple are Denise and Greg Platt, a seemingly ideal couple living the good life in 1982. There is 13-year-old son, Brian (Christian Convery) the embodiment of a good kid, devoted to archery and his dog, Starbuck. There is a precocious college-bound daughter, Audrey (Maisy Stella), a budding astronomer who dreams of following in the footsteps of her idol, Carl Sagan. The envy of their Michigan suburb, Denise and Greg have successfully hidden the tensions of unfulfilled ambitions and employment insecurity from everyone except their kids who are privy to the loud voices emanating from behind closed doors. Though the word “divorce” has yet to be spoken out loud, it is on everyone’s mind. Things come to a head at the annual summer block party where the pressure cooker of keeping secrets from each threatens to explode over Starbuck’s etiquette and an obnoxious neighbor (P.J. Byrne) with no sense of humor or compassion. The D-word becomes less a concept and more an inevitability.
Not even unexplained lights, ear-popping noises, and unexplained cosmic waves that culminate in their neighborhood becoming detached in time, if not space, from the present offers much of a distraction. Differing approaches to faith, honesty, and the best plan for surviving without power, water, or a reliable food source, all lead to more bickering, while the disappearance of the family dog will lead them all from the relative safety of a home-turned-bunker and into close encounters of the Jurassic kind.
There is a parallel to be drawn between the security of a solid marriage giving way to chaos, and the insecurity of waking up with no frame of reference to a new reality. One is only metaphorically fatal, of course, but the psychological impact of the other is still devastating. And it is this impact that proves to have the highest stakes for Denise and Greg as they rediscover what drew them together as they barely have time to breathe, much less find a way out of their cosmic conundrum.
Though replete with tantalizing effects of prehistoric creatures going about their daily lives unruffled by the change in scenery, the survival of the nuclear family is the focus with heartwarming interludes between bloody scenes of dinosaurs feeding. Brother and sister stop taking each other for granted, and Denise and Greg, when faced with the permanent loss of one another, find a way to let the detritus of simmering resentments fall away. Yes, it takes a flock of fleeing mini-raptors stampeding over the car in which they’ve taken refuge, but when it happens, Hathaway and McGregor make it clear that this couple is as surprised as we are that it is happening, and as deeply completely committed as if they had renewed their wedding vows.
As for the narrative, it’s a sterling example of how to do a slow reveal. The family wakes up after bunking together in the family room with the power still out. With no radios working, they go about their morning as usual not noticing what we see. The neighbor across the street leaving for work as usual, only to return moments later, dashing into his home in a way that doesn’t reflect a forgotten wallet or briefcase. A neighborhood cat giving a snarl that is a little too high-pitched. And what is making a large swath of shrubbery tremble violently outside the window is disquieting at best. Then the shadow of something with a familiar but impossible shape. By the time we finally see a raptor rummaging through a trashcan, our nerves have been primed for what is to come but still ragged enough to gasp. It doesn’t end there. As the situation becomes more desperate, and the family lets down its guard, the monster that oozes through their improvised defenses is even more horrifying not just for its silence that fails to alert anyone, but also for its seemingly endless size. When Denise takes a kitchen knife to it, she’s not just defending her family, she’s exhibiting the frenzy of catharsis triggered by an inescapable cataclysm. Hathaway drives the story with determination tempered with terror that keeps her one dino roar away from a complete breakdown. She makes Denise entirely relatable and enormously admirable as her eyes go wide but her voice stays steady with a primal instinct that kicks in instinctively.
Writer/director David Robert Mitchell gives us the relentless desperation of a hopeless situation but is kind enough to drop some welcome comic relief, including a Chelonian encounter that leaves our couple flummoxed, and might lead to a whole new fad in lawn decorations. Here’s hoping. The narrative plays out without ever repeating its tropes as it and finds a novel way to explain/not explain what is happening.
THE END OF OAK STREET is a wild flight of perilous fancy in which safety is always tantalizingly out of reach as sudden death lurks with extreme prejudice. With a refreshing originality and a white-knuckle jolt of an execution, it plays with curiosity, wonder, and the miracle that is a functional family.
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