The Platt family bands together to navigate their new surroundings after a cosmic event transports their suburban neighborhood to someplace unknown.

With Tom Holland and Zendaya all over movie screens it’s easy to forget that this is also kind of an Anne Hathaway year. She had weirdo sort of indie drama Mother Mary before her return in Devil Wears Prada 2, then the female lead in The Odyssey before heading up the cast of The End of Oak Street.

Hathaway stars as Denise, a mother and wife (Ewan McGregor is her husband), who hides her passion for writing in the basement of her typical suburban home. That is, until her neighborhood is seemingly transported back in time to the age of dinosaurs. Don’t ask why, the movie doesn’t tell you, and it doesn’t need to. These aren’t elite scientists and soldiers, this is just a family struggling to survive.

Helmed by writer-director David Robert Mitchell, who is kind of coasting after his more thorough and complex It Follows and Under the Silver Lake, Oak Street unfolds in fun and simple ways. Sure the dinosaurs aren’t anything you haven’t seen in Jurassic Park but their wanton destruction isn’t a neat as those movies. The characters aren’t walking around with plot armor keeping them alive, there feels like there are stakes here, in a way that is completely different to the stakes in the Jurassic films.

The End of Oak Street is at turns funny and shocking and there is some emotional weight to it as well. The early 80s setting (pre-time jump) offers a unique moment in time that affects the characters outlooks, as well as their limitations in dealing with their new reality. I found this to be a rather unexpected delight.

Jonathan’s grade – B