“Is that a f–king dinosaur?”

Justin’s rating: Well that cements my decision to stay in this timeline, thank you

Justin’s review: If you’ve occasionally asked yourself, “Why don’t more movies jump on the Jurassic Park dino gravy train?” then welcome to the very large club of people who’ve been wondering that since 1993. There’s a good multi-level explanation for this question, including the sheer expense and the stranglehold that the Jurassic Park franchise has on the industry (few people want to go up against Steven Spielberg’s darling), but one aspect of the answer is that it’s hard to come up with good explanations of how people and dinos end up interacting. You either send people back in time to encounter dinosaurs, you bring dinosaurs here, you make dinosaurs here, or you discover dinosaurs in the middle of the planet or something.

The End of Oak Street figured out a way to do a dino story that, while not completely original, at least feels fresh enough to sidestep being direct competition with InGen and John Hammond’s crew. The hook is pretty simple, actually: What if a wormhole (or something similar) threw an entire modern neighborhood back into prehistoric times populated by a whole lot of hungry hungry critters?

It’s 1982, and a bunch of bright lights herald the imminent swapping of a two-mile radius of a subdivision with a swamp from millions of years ago. Among the unwitting time travelers is the Platt family, starring plucky can-do-anything Anne Hathaway as the mom, the nebbish sad sack Ewan McGregor as the dad, and a couple of Stranger Things replicas for the kids. There’s a good period of time that they’re given to gradually understand their predicament before the dinos get curious enough to really invade the neighborhood, but suffice to say, it’s not long before most everyone’s gobbled up and the dinos are rooting through trash cans.

Actually, I liked that detail. It does make sense that scavengers would go right for our abundant garbage.

The mystery of how this happened isn’t really explained beside some speculation and the occasional time bubbles popping in and out — it just gets the ball rolling on all of this PG-13 survival horror. Because that’s what The End of Oak Street is, a slightly creepy and more melodramatic take on that part of the Jurassic Park movies where everyone’s on the run from bloodthirsty dinosaurs. I really do wish that there was more in the way of a deeper mystery or even exploration of the prehistoric world outside of their neighborhood, but alas, everyone stays put in the subdivision. That’s probably wise.

Because it’s PG-13, there’s a limit to how much the filmmakers can show of the dino slaughter, but it’s still quite a lot, a chunk of it is more disturbing than you’d think. Few people in this movie are armed, and fewer still outside of our core family band together. I thought we’d see the neighborhood survivors come together to make a fort, gather up ammo, and problem solve as a community. However, that’s not the direction that this film wanted to go in, so it stays with the Platts from start to finish.

And it’s OK. This isn’t super-high budget CGI production, but it gets the job done and gives us some ugly and no doubt smelly dinosaurs as our stand-in monsters of the week. There’s a lot of creativity with the look and activities of the dinosaurs, and it once again felt fresh and different than what the Jurassic Park IP’s been giving us for decades now. It’s surreal in the best of ways to see these creatures stomping all over our literal backyards, and that makes it far more unsettling than if they were in a giant zoo.

My son, the dino expert, had a good time identifying the different species but complained afterward that they were all taken from different eras and made no sense jumbled together.

The Platts have some drama that should be addressed but isn’t, really, and the main four characters don’t have much in the way of deep personalities. Hathaway is the standout as a mom pushed to the brink, but I winced at yet another Hollywood movie where the father figure had to be portrayed as incredibly flawed in comparison.

Probably the most grating part of the movie was when the mom kept getting mad at the dad for being verbally optimistic instead of realistic/pessimistic. Like, what do you want lady? To freak out your kids? I guess you do. This guy’s trying to keep these frightened kids from losing it, but hoping for the best is apparently a Bad Thing and must be lectured. OK, whatever.

Honestly, every time this movie tried to turn toward drama, it stumbled, but when it stuck with the details and simple visceral survival horror, it found a great stride.

I also liked that this movie chose an early ’80s setting. It gives us another sense of time traveling — the details in the costuming, sets, and vehicles is spot-on — and removes a lot of high-tech tools and toys that would only get in the way of a streamlined survival setting. And the filmmakers showed nice restraint in not beating us over the head that THIS IS THE ’80S but simply letting it be part of the backdrop.

There’s a nice moment when the daughter escapes to the car in the garage to listen to Steve Winwood’s “Valerie,” and it felt authentic. In the face of overwhelming horror, who wouldn’t want to retreat into a pocket of familiar pop culture for a moment?

With characters that had better writing and personalities, this would’ve been an ace of a scifi/horror flick. As it stands, The End of Oak Street is an above-average B-movie with tones of JJ Abrams and M Night Shyamalan. If you want to get your dino fix with some genuinely ugly critters, this is a no-brainer. As in, shut your brain off and have a good time.