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It’s not often we get dinosaur movies that are not part of a certain franchise. It’s definitely an underserved market and always peaks my interest!
This movie takes place in the early 80’s, good suburban neighborhood in a quaint town with lots of families, summer bbq’s, picture perfect! The Platt family has Denise (Anne Hathaway) as the matriarch, Greg (Ewan McGregor) as the dad and Audrey (Maisy Stella), and Brian (Christian Convery) as the daughter and son. Denise and Greg have been having problems and are potentially on the edge of divorce, the kids start to see the changes in the parents relationship and begin to question what is going to happen to their family. While they are going through familial challenges, strange things start to happen in the neighborhood. Brian sees a bright light and the next morning everything has changed. They start to see dinosaurs in the neighborhood and it turns out, they were affected by some kind of wormhole and the entire neighborhood is now either back in time, or the future is in the past.
The family fights for their survival, battling dinosaurs and trying to figure out a way to get “home”. Through the movie you see the family separated, including looking for their family dog, Starbuck. One scene I didn’t really understand was when they were in a car getting trampled, but instead of showing all the dinosaurs, they focused on Denise and Greg. It’s possible this was for comedic timing with the end of the scene but I felt it was a huge missed opportunity to show a cool stampede with a ton of different types of dinosaurs. I will not spoil the ending but I will say I was not expecting it to end that way. So the element of surprise is definitely there!
The movie itself is pretty entertaining and at an hour and a half, it felt appropriately long. I enjoyed the originality of the concept, and overall liked it. The accurate depiction of the dinosaurs, especially showing their feathers and size, felt very authentic and real.
I do wish there were more dinosaurs, when you’re playing with an original concept like this, there’s so many opportunities and it felt like they could’ve taken more of a chance.
I would not take kids to see this, I think the rating of PG-13 is accurate here. There is a lot of violence and some interesting scenes involving Dino’s. Overall the move was pretty good and I always appreciate original ideas in Hollywood. I would watch this again and subsequent films if they make them.
THE END OF OAK STREET is in theaters August 14th, 2026.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Ashley Nowlin (Contributing Editor) is a frequent traveler currently living in Phoenix. She's a super nerd who enjoys all kinds of movies and doesn't always think the book was better. Click Here to check out Ashley's Articles.