The End of Oak Street Review: Everything is Stretched a Bit Too Thin
· BCPosted in: Kaitlyn Booth, Movies, Review, Warner Bros | Tagged: anne hathaway, Ewan McGreggor, The End of Oak Street
The End of Oak Street Review: Everything is Stretched a Bit Too Thin
Everything in The End of Oak Street is stretched just a bit too thin and severely lessens the kick ass impact of watching Anne Hathaway shotgun a dinosaur to the face.
Published Fri, 14 Aug 2026 07:47:10 -0500
by Kaitlyn Booth
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Article Summary
- The End of Oak Street review finds the movie takes too long to get going, making its short runtime feel much longer.
- Marketing for The End of Oak Street leans hard on dinosaurs, but the bigger mystery is the neighborhood’s strange move.
- Once The End of Oak Street finds its groove, it delivers a fun, silly family-versus-dinosaurs survival story.
- The End of Oak Street never digs into its cosmic premise, leaving a thin concept that may have worked better shorter.
The End of Oak Street wants to be a good romp at the movies, but it takes way too long to get going, which is even more of an issue when the runtime is already on the short side.
Director: David Robert Mitchell
Summary: The Platt family bands together to navigate their new surroundings after a cosmic event transports their suburban neighborhood to someplace unknown.
The End of Oak Street is a weird little movie when you break it all down, and it's pretty clear that no one involved has any idea how to market it to the masses. The trailers revealed that the entire neighborhood had moved, and the later marketing material really leaned into all of the dinosaurs running around. If you look at these two plot points, they are pretty much the entire point of the movie, and revealing both of them doesn't spoil the run, but it does lessen it.
When you think about which of the two plot points should have been held back, most people would say the dinosaur, but leaning into the dinosaurs for the marketing isn't a bad idea. If anything, they should have kept the fact that everyone moved a secret because that is the added wrinkle that makes this entire movie an extended episode of The Twilight Zone.
The thing is, once The End of Oak Street gets going, it isn't a bad time. The marketing is selling a much darker, more serious film than the ridiculous thing appearing on screen. However, the first act is far too long, with some foreshadowing that hits with all of the subtly of a 2×4 to the face. When you're being that unsubtle, and your movie is ultimately so unserious, you don't get to waste so much of your limited run time to get to the good stuff.
That slow-to-start first act also means this is one of the longest-feeling ~100-minute movies you've seen in a while. It feels so much longer, and anytime a movie feels longer than it is, that is often indicative of pacing and/or structural issues. In this case, the structure is fine; it's about as classic as you can get, but the pacing is the thing that really kneecaps this entire film.
Once things get going, The End of Oak Street gets better as it runs down every single cliche you'll expect from a movie featuring a family versus a bunch of dinosaurs. Everyone makes every stupid decision you expect from them. People end up getting hurt or killed who could have survived if someone else weren't an idiot. A dog is running around, and people are going to get really annoyed by the dog and the role it plays in the film.
There is very little of substance here. The film doesn't even bother to explain what's happening. There is a brief "well, this thing happened," and then we move on. It seemingly doesn't matter how the entire neighborhood moves; the how and why aren't important. Or the why is important as an overall plot point, so everyone can try to get home. Still, aside from that, we're trying to logic our way around surplanting an entire neighborhood from the early '80s into a new location. Also, dinosaurs aren't given much time.
Perhaps the issue is that, as essentially the plot of an episode of The Twilight Zone, the entire concept of The End of Oak Street is better suited to a short or an anthology television show. Everything is stretched just a bit too thin and severely lessens the kick ass impact of watching Anne Hathaway shotgun a dinosaur to the face.
The End of Oak Street
Review by Kaitlyn Booth
5.5/10
The End of Oak Street wants to be a good romp at the movies, but it takes way too long to get going, even more so when the runtime is already on the short side.
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