The End Of Oak Street’s Sci-Fi Twist Is Simpler Than You Think
The summer’s last big blockbuster brings dinosaurs to suburbia.
You know it’s a good year when you get two Spielberg films in the span of a few months... even if one of those films isn’t actually directed by the man himself. But The End of Oak Street, the latest from director David Robert Mitchell, might as well be. It’s an Amblin film in its bones, taking heavy inspiration from Jurassic Park, Poltergeist, E.T., and even a bit of Back to the Future. But it also makes a lot of sense that J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions is behind the film. Oak Street is not secretly a Cloverfield movie, as many people predicted before its release, but it is still powered by a sci-fi twist.
In Oak Street, a quiet Michigan suburb circa 1982 finds itself suddenly transported millions of years into the past. That means, when the Platt family wakes up on a random summer morning, they find dinosaurs skulking just outside their door. How they (and their neighbors) wound up in this situation is a question that comes second to Mitchell’s clear affinity for dino-influenced terror, but once Oak Street has its fun putting the Platts through primal existential fear, it eventually dives into a time-twisting final act.
Spoilers below for The End of Oak Street!
The End of Oak Street’s ending, explained
Despite its weird mystery, Oak Street isn’t actually a Cloverfield movie.
Even before they’re transported to prehistoric times, Oak Street makes it clear that very little is well in the Platt household. Denise (Anne Hathaway) is a bored stay-at-home-mom whose passion project — a novel she writes in secret — just barely conceals her desire to leave her family for greener pastures. Her husband Greg (Ewan McGregor) has secrets of his own: he was laid off from his job weeks ago and hasn’t told a soul, content instead to pick up the slack by delivering pizzas.
This strife only worsens with the added pressure of surviving in the Jurassic era. When Denise and Greg aren’t protecting their kids, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery), from hungry predators, they’re arguing about the best way to do it (and about all the shocking things they’ve kept from each other).
Eventually, the Platts find a kind of groove. They’re getting along, bonding over their myriad near-fatal experiences, and working together to form a plan of escape. Audrey happens to be pretty brilliant, and she deduces that they’ve been sent back in time via a wormhole. Said phenomenon somehow switched their street with a two-mile plot of land millions of years in the past, but that opens the possibility of finding another wormhole that could return them to their time. Denise and Greg even briefly find one in a neighbor’s abandoned house, but the whole family isn’t accounted for when they do, so they vow not to escape unless everyone can go home together.
Wormholes and portals brings the Platts face-to-face with apex predators from another time.
When Denise and Greg reunite with their kids — plus Jeanette (Jordan Alexa Davis), an orphaned neighbor around Audrey’s age — they don’t get much time to regroup before they run into a massive Allosaurus. Greg sacrifices himself to save Denise, which leaves just four survivors searching for a way out. After another harrowing attack from an even bigger sea snake, Denise and the kids find a new portal to jump through. It isn’t easy, but they eventually escape from their suburban hell and end up back in the present day... just before the swap takes place.
The Platts have about 30 minutes to warn the residents of Oak Street, and they don’t waste a second. Jeanette saves her parents, while Denise makes a few calls via payphone. Her quick thinking saves Greg, her favorite neighbor, Mrs. Huddleston (Anne Gee Byrd), and the town’s librarian (Emily Kuroda), plus a few others. The Platts, blissfully reunited with a totally oblivious Greg, watch from a distance as a glowing orb engulfs their entire street and replaces it with prehistoric vegetation and a few errant dinosaurs.
What sent the Platts to the past?
Oak Street doesn’t get too into the weeds with its sci-fi twist, and it’s probably better for it.
In the film’s coda, two years have passed since Oak Street disappeared. Denise, now a published author, is revered as the town’s savior. The dinosaurs who wound up in the present were corralled by the military, and scientists have been working round the clock to understand how a wormhole could have randomly generated. No one has an answer yet, which leaves the door open for a sequel.
That said, it’s refreshing to enjoy a strange summer blockbuster without a sci-fi conspiracy to have to wrap one’s head around. We’re left with the image of the Platts finally united — alongside Jeanette, her parents, and (hilariously) another version of herself she managed to save — more or less healed from their harrowing journey to the past. Whether we eventually get another film that explains the weird science at play here (or belatedly connects this adventure to a Cloverfield paradox), or Mitchell designed this story to be a one-off, it was certainly entertaining.
