Anne Hathaway is having quite a year, with a whopping five projects hitting the big screen. As The Odyssey continues to grow its billion-dollar box office earnings, the actress is already starring in another flick that’s causing quite a stir amongst critics. The End of Oak Street is a science fiction thriller that’s set to hit the 2026 movie calendar on August 14, and some reviews are saying it’s the best dinosaur movie since Jurassic Park.
When you’re talking about a survival film with dinosaurs, Steven Spielberg’s 1993 classic is the benchmark against which all movies will be compared (even if producer J.J. Abrams had a different horror flick in mind). So I definitely expected Jurassic Park to be brought up in The End of Oak Street reviews. What I didn’t expect was to see critics putting the movie at or near the same level. That’s exactly what’s happening, though, as David Ehrlich of IndieWire rates the movie an A-, calling it the biggest surprise of the summer:
A crowd-pleasing but winkingly mean-spirited Amblin homage that perfectly captures the sweet menace of movies like Gremlins and The Goonies (so perfectly, in fact, that it almost feels like you’ve been sucked through a hole in space-time yourself), The End of Oak Street is what multiplexes have been missing from recent summers: Lean, clever, original, cheer-at-the-screen entertainment that will traumatize 10-year-olds for life and make their parents feel like they’re kids again.
The End of Oak Street was directed by David Robert Mitchell and stars Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella and Christian Convery alongside Anne Hathaway as the Platt family. It’s a movie that Owen Gleiberman of Variety calls “end-of-the-summer trash,” describing it as a loopier — and in some ways better — Jurassic movie. I can’t quite tell if his assessment is meant to be a compliment, but he goes on to say the thriller is “preposterous,” but also “shamelessly fun.” In Gleiberman’s words:
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The End of Oak Street is sometimes scary, more so than anything in the lumbering last few Jurassic sequels. And sometimes it’s a hoot. Intentionally or not? A bit of both, and that’s the film’s knowing but innocent stupido-kitsch dynamic.
Zachary Lee of RogerEbert gives the flick a perfect 4 out of 4 stars, writing in his review of The End of Oak Street that it’s the “most thrilling dinosaur movie in ages.” It features envelope-pushing brutality, Lee says, but never forgets to be fun. The critic continues:
Mitchell’s film features all of the Cretaceous carnage you’d expect and want, but it’s the type of ambitious blockbuster that excites not just due to the blood it draws on-screen (of which there’s copious amounts) but for how it cuts deep into the interior lives of its characters, contextualizing its thrills in life’s relatable doldrums. This isn’t a film that sees the problems of its characters as something to speed-run past to get to the dino munching, but instead anchors its vicious spectacle in earnest human drama.
Clint Gage of IGN rates The End of Oak Street a “Good” 7 out of 10, noting that the movie leans into its Spielbergian influences and is mostly successful. It does, however, toe the line that separates “loving homage” from “I’ve seen this before,” Gage says, writing:
It has some great moments, but on the balance, this is a good movie. David Robert Mitchell’s first feature film in eight years is a rose-tinted romp through Spielberg’s ’80s, complete with dinosaurs, an incredible Anne Hathaway performance, and a visual flare to elevate it beyond just impersonation. While the influences are worn proudly, they veer into schtick occasionally, but not often enough to ruin the good time.
You can’t win ‘em all, though, and while Kristy Puchko of Mashable does compare The End of Oak Street to Jurassic Park, it’s not in the complimentary way other critics did. Anne Hathaway’s film looks like summer fun, Puchko writes, but it is not. It’s bleak, brutal and ultimately infuriating. She explains:
While Spielberg used his amazing stories to celebrate mankind’s resilience and the power of community — even in his summer release Disclosure Day — Mitchell’s story is harrowing in its portrait of survival of the selfish. His heroes will not come together as unlikely allies with neighbors and strangers. Mostly, when the Platts see another human being attacked, they take the opportunity to run the other way with a consistently astounding lack of situational awareness.
The dinosaur survival thriller is getting mostly positive reactions, earning a Certified Fresh 84% on Rotten Tomatoes. It sounds decidedly darker than Jurassic Park, but if critics are suggesting it deserves to even be mentioned in the same sentence as one of the best movies from the ‘90s, I’m game.