When I sat down to watch The End of Oak Street, my expectations for this film were on the floor. It's not often we see dinosaur movies getting made, because one franchise has gotten a stranglehold on the genre. And while Jurassic Park doesn't get it right every time, it does it well enough that we haven't seen too many competitors over the years.
The End of Oak Street is a worthy rival to Jurassic Park, but you wouldn't know it from any of the trailers. I think a lot more people would be getting out to see this star-studded feature if they knew it wasn't anything like the beloved franchise, and more of a goofy monster survival movie than it ends up being.
The End Of Oak Street's Trailer Misrepresented The Movie
If it wasn't evident from any of the reviews, The End Of Oak Street caught a lot of critics off guard. The movie starts off feeling like an Amblin Movie had a baby with Jurassic Park, and then takes a hard turn into what feels like a live-action Rick and Morty episode. I know the latter is working on its own movie, and I'd argue it was already made after watching this.
Between the violence, jump scares, and random dinosaur sex scene, I was hooting and hollering along with everyone in the theater the entire movie. It was so strange; it had the feeling of a movie in which people don't care to be loud because it's bad, but it's a legitimately enjoyable film. I think it's more appropriate to say it's all just so silly and insane at times; one can't help but have an audible reaction to a lot of it.
The trailer doesn't prepare you for this at all, and maybe that's a double-edged sword. I went in expecting Signs and walked out realizing I watched Snakes On A Plane, but way better. It's so jarring, but I think if more people knew it was like the latter, I wouldn't have to be telling them now is the time to show up for this movie.
I Really Wish We Could Get A Sequel
The movie's ending makes it feel like The End of Oak Street won't get a sequel, but I feel the potential is there. Director David Robert Mitchell has not indicated that the story is anything other than a closed narrative.
It's a real shame, because I feel like the movie only scratched the surface with the time-traveling phenomenon. It would be great to see this happening across different eras, and how various modern neighborhoods would respond to being sent to the Middle Ages or elsewhere. If nothing else, they could at least explore the big reveal at the end of the movie, because I think there's a lot to chew on there.
See The End Of Oak Street soon before it leaves theaters, because I genuinely believe it'll be a superior experience than watching it at home. It's a great movie I didn't expect to love as much as I do, and I daresay I enjoy it much more than the past few Jurassic Park movies.
