The End of Oak Street is a fairly entertaining science fiction survival flick written and directed by David Robert Mitchell. The cast includes Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisey Stella, and Christian Convery.

For some reason, this film is set in the early 1980’s in a suburban town in Michigan and centers on the troubled Platt family. The marriage between Denise and Greg has become rather strained. In the midst of their family difficulties, a strange plant appears, and peculiar lights are flashing throughout the neighborhood. Things get more harrowing when the prehistoric creatures start appearing. The family realizes that their neighborhood was somehow transported millions of years in the past. As they try to evade the rampaging and ravenous dinosaurs, they must find their way through the portal that also keeps flashing in and out of existence.

This is one of those films where there are some gaps in the explanation, but it kind of works. Hathaway and McEwan are pretty interesting to watch. I am not sure that I liked how McEwan’s role, Greg Platt, was written at times, but I have little objection to the performances.

There never is a coherent explanation as to how these portals came into being, but I found that I didn’t particularly need that. I suppose that could leave room for another film, however I sort of hope it doesn’t come to that.

The visual effects were quite good, which is not surprising. There were some genuinely suspenseful and disturbing moments throughout the film. There was a scene with a huge worm or eel that made quite an impression as well.

It still falls into the realm of being just a fun romp without as much depth as the writer seemed to be going for. Sometimes, the hysteria exhibited by the son, played by Convery, got to be a little much.

Sometimes, the writing contained too many overly familiar tropes such as the marital strife, the sensitive father, the moody daughter, and so forth. These were situations and characters we have seen before. I am not sure why writers can’t just have a generally happy and stable family who face an extraordinary situation, and the audience can just root for them all the way without wondering if their marriage will survive.

A film about dinosaurs stomping their way through suburbs is actually pretty cool overall.

On the whole, this film is actually pretty good even if I would have structured the characters a little differently. The ending felt a bit hurried and not exactly coherent, but it didn’t really ruin the film for me.

Anyway, this particular film has a few cracks but does get the job done when it comes to providing a solid piece of entertainment.