The End of Oak Street      Director: David Robert MitchellCert: 15AStarring: Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella, Christian Convery, Jordan Alexa Davis, PJ Byrne, Hudson MeekRunning Time: 1 hr 50 minsThis will not be the only review that notes the appropriateness of this ripping sci-fi romp transporting its characters – indeed, their entire suburb – many years into the past. After all, that is what the film is doing for its audience. It might be a stretch to describe The End of Oak Street (punny title) as a pastiche of high-era Steven Spielberg, but the echoes are unmistakable. We visit a troubled family in the American suburbs. A strange light disturbs their sleep. They end up squabbling with an assortment of dinosaurs. It is 1982, for heaven’s sake – the year ET ate the world’s box office alive.Happily, David Robert Mitchell, director of the celebrated horror It Follows, injects enough of his own eccentric sensibility to give the film independent existence: long rattling takes through picket-fence mayhem; split diopter shots that allow both enormous close-ups and deep background to remain simultaneously in focus; a ruthless approach to the bloody dispatch of key characters. Despite haphazard explanations for the core weirdness, this remains a top-flight summer entertainment that knocks all the Jurassic World films into a cocked hat.Anyway, welcome back to Sub-Spielbergia. In the early years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the Platt family are enjoying a neighbourhood barbecue in their sedate corner of Detroit (Mitchell’s economically troubled home city). All seems well on the surface, but underground tensions bubble. Greg (Ewan McGregor) is doing stints as pizza delivery man to cover up the loss of his full-time job from fraught wife Denise (Anne Hathaway). She is streaming her domestic worries into a novel that an older neighbour is reading with sincere admiration. Young Brian (Christian Convery) is angering various bits of the locale: he caused the brother of a bully to break his arm; a next-door neighbour is threatening to shoot the boy’s dog. Only his sister Audrey (Maisy Stella) seems on anything like an even keel.Shortly before all these everyday worries are rendered as naught, a strange prehistoric plant appears in the garden of Denise’s helpful reader. Later that extraterrestrial glow illuminates the night. They wake to find a colossal pile of pungent dung in the neighbouring garden. Mitchell learns the signature lesson of Spielberg’s Jaws and initially reveals his monsters with finesse and caution. Where did that dung come from? We see a scaled tail retreating into a hedge. The first hell-for-leather pursuit places the dinosaur on the other side of a fence that gets clattered to bits as the beast rubs against it.[ Harry Potter fans force relocation of UK-Ireland undersea cable to avoid Dobby’s ‘grave’Opens in new window ]McGregor makes the best of a slightly mousy role, but, not for the first time in 2026, the film belongs to Ms Hathaway. She has, in a busy career, not had enough opportunity to confirm she has just the right face for abject terror. That capacious mouth takes over the actor’s entire head as Denise rocks backwards under assault from theropod and sauropod. Not that she is any sort of weedy damsel. After, this year, excelling in Mother Mary, The Devil Wears Prada 2 and The Odyssey, Hathaway finally gets the opportunity to discharge a shotgun while bellowing farewell to prehistoric behemoths.So, what the heck is going on? There, the screenplay stumbles. Initially, we, not unreasonably, assume that dinosaurs from space are invading Earth. But, when the family seek to escape the area, they run against a cliff that descends to prehistoric rainforest. It seems as if a sizeable nugget of suburban Michigan has been randomly dispatched way, way back in time. The film never quite makes sense of this and is at its weakest when it tries so to do. Better to just scrunch up your eyes and let the finely honed madness sweep through the system.In cinemas from August 14th