There have been plenty of attempts over the years to make a great dinosaur movie that isn’t Jurassic Park, but very few have even come close to matching the magic of Steven Spielberg’s immortal 1993 blockbuster. That’s the problem with dinosaur movies ever since Spielberg brought them back to life: the bar has been set impossibly high. 

The End of Oak Street may finally be the movie we’ve been waiting for. David Robert Mitchell’s wildly entertaining third feature is a wacky and thrilling combination of suburban family drama, creature feature, science fiction adventure, and Spielbergian / Joe Dante-esque / Shyamalan-esque spectacle that both embraces and elevates its wacky B-movie concept.

After It Follows and Under the Silver Lake, Mitchell has already proven that he can’t be easily boxed into one particular genre or filmmaking style. The End of Oak Street is an enormous swing in another completely different direction, but his fingerprints are all over it. His fascination with ordinary spaces becoming threatening, his meticulous visual compositions, his strange tonal shifts, and his ability to find something unsettling lurking just beneath the peaceful veneer of suburbia are all here.

The movie begins on Oak Street, a picturesque American suburb in 1982. The Platt family looks like the definition of middle-class suburban normalcy, but things aren’t nearly as idyllic inside the house. Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor) are constantly arguing, their marriage is deteriorating, and both are keeping secrets from each other. Greg spends too much time working and avoiding the problems at home, while Denise has tucked away in the basement writing a novel about a woman who dreams of leaving her family behind. Their children, older sister Audrey (Maisy Stella) and younger brother Brian (Christian Convery), are more aware of their parents’ problems than either adult realizes. Then the dinosaurs show up.

What starts with strange prehistoric plants and geysers appearing in yards and enormous mysterious droppings eventually becomes something much more terrifying. Strange lights appear in the night, power and water disappear, and before long, the residents of Oak Street discover that their quiet little slice of American suburbia has somehow been transported back in time to the prehistoric world populated by creatures that very much consider humans to be an opportunity for food.

The genius of Mitchell’s approach is that he doesn’t immediately throw every dinosaur onto the screen. Instead, he allows the audience to sit with the uncertainty. Something is out there. Something is moving. Something is killing people. While Oak Street thankfully doesn’t wait too long to deliver the dino goods, the movie understands that sometimes the anticipation of seeing a creature is more terrifying than the creature itself, and the tension steadily builds as the neighborhood goes from safe haven to open hunting ground.

Visually, this thing is an absolute blast. The long takes through the streets and cul-de-sacs, the thematically deliberate split-diopter shots, the old cars, the practical-looking environments, and Michael Gioulakis’ cinematography give the movie a tactile quality that makes everything feel both grounded and distinctly cinematic. There’s a huge, sweeping Michael Giacchino score accompanying it all as well, and the combination is basically catnip for anyone who grew up loving big old school adventure movies. The influences are obvious, particularly in the visual language and the way dinosaurs are often allowed to exist at the edges of the frame rather than constantly being shoved directly into it.

It is also, surprisingly, one of the best large-scale “ordinary family faces extraordinary circumstances” movies in quite some time - perhaps even the best since Signs. That’s because Mitchell doesn’t treat the Platts as disposable pieces of meat in a killer dinosaur movie. Their problems matter. Their arguments matter. Their secrets matter. When the family begins to fall apart physically as the neighborhood collapses around them, the emotional stakes are already there. Denise and Greg’s marriage is in serious trouble, and the arrival of several million years’ worth of apex predators isn’t exactly conducive to couples counseling.

Hathaway and McGregor are both excellent, and the entire cast sells the increasingly desperate situation. There is a lot of screaming and sobbing here, but it never feels like empty melodrama. When the family is separated and the children leave the safety of the house to search for Starbuck, their unruly family dog, the movie suddenly becomes genuinely frightening. And, this isn’t a spoiler, but if you’re particularly sensitive to beloved family pets meeting horrible ends, consider this your warning: The End of Oak Street is not messing around.

The movie also has an overall solid sense of humor about itself and its own ridiculous premise. It knows exactly how insane it is to watch a suburban neighborhood full of people trying to figure out what the hell to do while dinosaurs are tearing through their homes. Yet Mitchell never lets the joke completely overwhelm the very tangible danger.

There are deeper ideas at work here in Mitchell’s screenplay about family, marriage, and the fragility of the comfortable lives we construct for ourselves. The suburban setting is deliberately presented as a kind of nostalgic fantasy before Mitchell starts ripping it apart. The thematic backbone can wind up feeling a bit perfunctory when all is said and done, but there’s just enough going on under the prehistoric styled carnage (in large part thanks to excellent performances from the cast) to keep Oak Street above the schlock.

The 1980s setting also ultimately feels a little unnecessary beyond giving Mitchell the opportunity to indulge in that wonderfully tactile Amblin-era aesthetic. But why can’t you apply that same mindset to the 2020s? This could have been set in the present day without fundamentally changing the story much, if at all. 

Of course, most audiences will find it hard to care too much about such things when the result is this much fun. The End of Oak Street is a huge, strange, sincere swing that somehow works. It’s a sci-fi dinosaur action movie, but it’s also a domestic family drama. It’s a homage in various ways, but it never feels like Mitchell simply imitating someone else’s work. Most importantly, it’s a reminder of how exciting it can be when a major studio gives an ambitious filmmaker the freedom to make something completely original and this off the wall.

I can’t decide whether this movie would have benefited from either going leaner and meaner or longer and deeper in its storytelling. It’s at a strange crossroads that leaves you wanting more in one respect or another. There’s nothing else quite like Oak Street, and much to its benefit, I suspect there won’t be for quite some time to come.

‘The End of Oak Street’ is now playing in theaters.