The End of Oak Street – Movie Review (5/5)

THE END OF OAK STREET is out in theaters, and I cannot recommend it enough. The one thing I knew for a fact as soon as the end credits came: I am definitely watching this again while it’s playing in theaters. A delicious genre-hybrid survival story from the It Follows director, but with a fierce Spielberg & J.J. Abrams vibe. Read our full The End of Oak Street movie review and get your tickets now!

THE END OF OAK STREET is coming to theaters worldwide, and this is the kind of summer blockbuster I have longed for. It has everything I loved about the Steven Spielberg movies of the 1980s and early 1990s, but gets much darker (I cannot believe it only has a PG-13 rating), and was produced by Alias, Lost, and Fringe creator J.J. Abrams. And yes, it is also very much a J.J. Abrams experience. In all the best ways.

This is a family survival story, set in 1980s USA suburbia (so it has an awesome soundtrack), and dinosaurs. Oh yeah, this is like Jurassic Park meets Stand by Me, and so much more. The characters are deliciously fleshed-out, and while not everyone makes the right choice, you can understand (most of the time) their reasoning.

Even the runtime of 1 hour and 39 minutes worked for it. Though, honestly, I didn’t want it to end!

Continue reading our The End of Oak Street movie review below. Find it in theaters from August 14, 2026.

Family survives together!

First of all, I absolutely love that The End of Oak Street is set in 1982, in a suburb in the USA. Forget about cellphones and social media. People showed up to be together, and concerns were just very different.  There was a freedom that was as liberating as constricting when it became obvious that the same freedoms didn’t really apply to everyone.

In The End of Oak Street, we begin by getting to know the Platt family. Mom and Dad (Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor) are not in a great place. And the fact that Dad keeps avoiding “the talk” only makes everything worse. Meanwhile, their daughter and son (Maisy Stella and Christian Convery) are just hoping their parents will work it out, so they can focus on their own coming-of-age struggles, whether a crush or a bully is the current issue!

All of this, however, will soon take a serious backseat to a much more prevalent event: A cosmic event of some sort, which includes a very bright light and a massive boom sound, that physically rips the Oak Street neighborhood from their well-known suburbia and transports it to someplace unknown. A place with a tropical climate and dinosaurs.

Many different kinds of dinosaurs, and most of them want to eat the Platt family. Well, and everyone else still around, obviously. Now, the four Platt family members must work and fight together if they are to have any hope of surviving this strange new world. A world where everything can hurt them, and weapons only work as a deterrent.

Quick note: The dinosaurs look amazing, and many have been updated with the latest theories about their skin, which isn’t all reptile-smooth here.

Anne Hathaway is simply fierce

As much as I do expect to buy The End of Oak Street later, I also highly recommend watching it in a theater now. In fact, I expect to watch it at least one more time while it’s playing in theaters. I mean, it’s dinosaurs and a great big sci-fi-adventure survival story with coming-of-age elements and realistic characters. Even the 1980s setting is something I always adore. It reminds me of childhood.

At the same time, I recognize that The End of Oak Street would never have been made as it stands here in 2026.

It’s nostalgic experiences through the glasses of the world we know and recognize today. The mom, Denise (Anne Hathaway), would never have been allowed to be the strong, fierce, and protective lioness. She is a character that Anne Hathaway portrays magnificently here. Nor would the story of the daughter, Audrey (Maisy Stella), have been included in a movie made in the 1980s – any parts of it. Not as clearly, anyway.

This is not to say that Ewan McGregor’s Greg isn’t also a strong character. He is, but he is also shown in a more realistic fashion now, whereas in the 1980s, he would probably have been portrayed by Arnold, Sly, or Bruce. An action-hero type of character instead of a realistic suburban dad. And the son, Brian (Christian Convery), is also portrayed as a typical boy from the early 1980s, with all that entails.

Do not miss out on The End of Oak Street in theaters!

David Robert Mitchell is the writer and director of The End of Oak Street, and horror fans should be very familiar with this name. Previously, David Robert Mitchell wrote and directed the horror hit movie It Follows. Oh yes, despite the media at large wanting to claim that 2026 was the year horror movies did well at the box office, horror fans know this happens every couple of years.

Also, I am now even more excited about They Follow, which David Robert Mitchell is currently filming.

This is one of the most magical, terrifying, and breathtaking summer blockbusters I have watched in a long time. As much as I have loved that horror movies have dominated the box office in 2026, The End of Oak Street is the kind of genre hybrid that I cannot get enough of. Hopefully, audiences at large agree with me.

Here at Heaven of Horror, we have been excited about this project for years – from back when it was titled Flowervale Street, and we knew practically nothing about it – and yet, I was not disappointed. Not even close! Even the score by regular J.J. Abrams composer, Michael Giacchino, is brilliant and full of wonder and terror, all wrapped up in one.

For the record, I also feel that The End of Oak Street is everything The Last House wanted to be, but never got close to achieving. So, if that recent Netflix release disappointed you, then this theatrical release should make you very happy.

The End of Oak Street is out in US theaters from August 14, 2026, and will be released globally the same week.

Details

Director: David Robert Mitchell
Writer: David Robert Mitchell
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Christian Convery, Maisy Stella, P.J. Byrne