David Robert Mitchell had a breakthrough in 2014 with It Follows, a taut shot of lo-fi supernatural horror that owed its sustained creepiness and visceral scares in large part to its skilled use of practical effects. The writer-director veers in the opposite direction with The End of Oak Street, a batty serve of Mesozoic mayhem in a modern suburban cul-de-sac in which actors spend a lot of time — on occasion, convincingly — fleeing something from the digital toolbox to be penciled in later. “I want to remember this insane, stupid moment!” says Anne Hathaway’s character when faced with the startling sight of two dinosaurs madly humping against the side of a house. Oh, hunny.
That kind of cheeky humor is sprinkled throughout, and the audience at a press-and-public preview was certainly laughing up a storm, both in moments where the comedy was intentional and others where…well, who knows? While it’s mindlessly entertaining in a big-dumb-fun kind of way, this is a movie that doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be, beyond a worshipful homage to 1980s Amblin, canonical Spielberg in particular. But lead producer J.J. Abrams already went there with comparable strengths and weaknesses in 2011’s Super 8.
