Film tip: The End of Oak Street turns suburbia into a prehistoric nightmare

The director of It Follows drops Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor and their children into a wonderfully inconvenient situation: their entire suburban neighbourhood has somehow landed in the prehistoric past. The End of Oak Street mixes dinosaur terror, 1980s family adventure and genuine domestic drama into a lean 100-minute survival thriller that looks made for the big screen.

Film details

• Title: The End of Oak Street
• Premiere date in the Netherlands: 13 August 2026
• Director: David Robert Mitchell
• Runtime: 100 minutes
• Genre: Science fiction, adventure, thriller
• Country: United States
• Language: English
• Subtitles: Dutch
• Age rating: 12+
• Cast: Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella and Christian Convery
• Where to watch in Rotterdam: KINO and Cinerama

What’s the vibe?

The Platt family lives on Oak Street, an ordinary American suburban street in the early 1980s. Then something decidedly less ordinary happens. A mysterious cosmic event tears their neighbourhood out of its familiar surroundings and deposits it somewhere very, very old.

There are dinosaurs.

Denise and Greg, played by Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, suddenly have to keep their children Audrey and Brian alive in a place where the garden fence no longer feels like particularly impressive home security.

David Robert Mitchell takes the threatening suburban spaces he used so effectively in It Follows and applies them to a much bigger playground. Empty streets, garages and family homes become genuinely unnerving when something prehistoric might wander past the window.

The result appears to sit somewhere between family drama, creature feature and old-school adventure film. Think ordinary people dealing with an extraordinary problem, except the extraordinary problem has teeth.

Trailer

Check out the trailer below - paste the YouTube embed here.

Why you might like it

• Eyes: Dinosaurs wandering through suburban streets, eerie empty neighbourhoods and cinematography from Michael Gioulakis, who also shot It Follows.
• Heart: The spectacle revolves around a family already carrying its own tensions before prehistoric survival becomes another item on the household agenda.
• Mind: The central mystery goes beyond escaping dinosaurs. Why was Oak Street transported, where exactly has it gone and is the prehistoric landscape really the whole story?

Critical reception.

The full critical verdict is still under wraps. As of 11 August, Rotten Tomatoes lists zero critic reviews and Metacritic has no Metascore yet. The formal review embargo is expected to lift shortly before the film’s wider international release.

The first social-media reactions, however, are strikingly enthusiastic. Critics and journalists who attended early screenings repeatedly praise the film’s brisk pacing, frightening dinosaur sequences, 1980s adventure atmosphere and surprisingly sincere family story.

IndieWire critic David Ehrlich called it the biggest surprise of the summer and praised its humour, pacing and considerably meaner take on Amblin-style adventure. Sean Fennessey highlighted its combination of blockbuster fun and genuine family feeling, while other early reactions have singled out Anne Hathaway, the production design and the film’s willingness to make dinosaurs properly scary again.

Several reactions compare its atmosphere with classic Spielberg and Amblin productions, while also noting that Mitchell pushes the violence and tension considerably harder. The dinosaur action is being described as intense, occasionally gruesome and much less cuddly than the nostalgic suburban setting might initially suggest.

There are no meaningful average review scores yet and no major awards or nominations have been announced. We will know much more once the full reviews arrive.

Scene to watch for

Watch the first moment when the Platts realise that Oak Street has not simply experienced a power cut, earthquake or very aggressive planning dispute.

Mitchell reportedly makes strong use of empty suburban space, allowing familiar streets and houses to become threatening before the dinosaurs fully reveal themselves. That gradual shift from domestic normality to prehistoric danger is where the premise really earns its claws.

Recommended pairing

Give this one proper summer-blockbuster treatment. Grab something hearty beforehand, then choose the biggest screen and loudest sound system available.

Afterwards, take a walk through a quiet residential street and enjoy the reassuring absence of anything weighing several tonnes behind the parked cars. Bonus points if you spot a suspiciously large bird and briefly reconsider.

Need-to-knows

The End of Oak Street is written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, best known for It Follows and Under the Silver Lake. It is his first feature since Under the Silver Lake in 2018.

Mitchell has explained that the original idea came while walking through his neighbourhood in Michigan and suddenly imagining a dinosaur standing beside an ordinary garage. That contrast between mundane suburbia and something fantastical became the foundation of the film.

Despite the obvious Jurassic Park comparison, Mitchell has cited The Twilight Zone, Poltergeist and Signs among the film’s important reference points. Producer J.J. Abrams has similarly described the project as a story about people and family first, with monsters entering that world.

The film was previously known as Flowervale Street before Warner Bros. unveiled The End of Oak Street as its final title.

Michael Gioulakis, who also worked with Mitchell on It Follows, serves as cinematographer. Michael Giacchino composed the score.