The End of Oak Street - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

The End of Oak Street



Movie:
4K Video:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:

AV NIRVANA is member and reader-supported. When you purchase an item using our links, we might earn an affiliate commission.
​

Movie
When The End of Oak Street was announced, it was announced as a secret project by David Robert Mitchell, who is most famous for directing It Follows, one of the most fascinating horror movies of the last 15 years. So naturally I was more than a little intrigued. But then came the theatrical response. A pretty damning set of reviews gave the consensus that this was a huge theatrical flop. But then again, I’m sort of fascinated by box office bombs, so I still requested the 4K to give it a check-out myself. And thankfully so. After chewing through two watchings, I have to come to the conclusion that this wasn’t a bad movie. It wasn’t a great movie either. But it was most definitely not a bad movie. There was so much potential, and so much done right, that it’s insanely hard to put a finger on the exact reason why I felt it just never grabbed the audience's attention.

Let's face it. We all know that this movie is a dinosaur movie. The trailer, the cover, the description all give it away in seconds. But the film takes its time getting there. The first act of the film is a strange family conflict with the Platt family struggling in the year 1982 (my birth year,r to be precise). Greg (Ewan McGregor) is hiding the lie that he’s been laid off by his boss to keep his family from worrying, while Denise (Anne Hathaway) dreams of moving to New York and leaving her family behind as she feels unseen. Their daughter Audrey (Maisy Stella) has her hopes on studying Astronomy at Cornell University (almost hilarious considering the recent controversy at Cornell), and their son Brian (Christian Convery) is just trying to keep from getting beaten up by the local bully. As the family navigates their awkward dance around each other, the world changes around them. In a flash of light an hour before midnight, they suddenly wake up to find something wrong. They’re no longer in Kansas anymore. Or more precisely, they’re no longer in the 20th century anymore.

David Robert Mitchell doesn’t bog down the plot trying to exposition dump HOW our characters got there; they just are dumped in the Prehistoric days of the dinosaurs, and now the family has to figure out a way back home. AT first it seems that this is a strange mistake, but bit by bit the Platts figure out that their little slice of Oak Street seems to have been transported through time 65 million years ago, and nothing else. And while that knowledge does them very little good in the short run, it does reveal a way home. Just before being transported back,k Brian saw a flash of light. Light that seems to be rips in time that are flickering in and out of existence all over Oak Street. And if they can just get to the nearest one, they can HOPEFULLY use them as a portal and get back home.

Kind of like It Follows, Mitchell places creepy and terrifying objects in the background, devoid of sound, as they draw closer. A pale prehistoric snake heading towards Denise will have your skin crawling despite the lack of noise, and the flicker of a dinosaur tail sliding behind a fence is just enough to catch your eye. And not to just keep things moody and disturbing, the sporadic violence can crop up out of nowhere. One second your skin is crawling from watching a serpent slide out of a pool, and the next second we’re watching a pair of Pterodactyls ripping your neighbor limb from limb. And the same goes for the humor. One moment we’re chuckling along with Denise and Greg, the next moment another dinosaur is trying to eat them (and does some bloody munching too).

Hathaway and McGregor are fantastic as always, giving solid performances as the frustrated husband trying to hold his family together, and the desperate wife who is doing everything she can to keep from breaking down. McGregor gets more of the comedy than Hathaway, but she has a few quirky moments that mold both of them into relatable characters. But strangely enough, with all this fun, I still have a hard time placing why this movie just didn’t completely resonate with me. Mike Gioulakis does a wonderful job with the camera work; the plot is solid, and the acting is good. But for some reason it feels like the film gets 90% there, but just can’t seem to really reach out and touch the audience’s hearts. It’s not bad, it’s not great, it’s entertaining, but somehow manages to leave you feeling like you want just a LITTLE more.




RatedPG-13 for some strong violent content, bloody images, some strong language, and suggestive material




4K Video: Video:
While The End of Oak Street was a 100% digital shoot, Mitchell and his crew employed quite a few heavy filters and noise/grain techniques to give it the impression of being shot in the 1980s. Colors can be bright and vivid (such as the luscious green yards, or the burning flame of a house going up), but also dulled and dimmed just a tad, with sepia hues here and there. The bitrate remains very high, giving us no signs of major artifacting that I could tell, and PLENTY of appreciable detail, despite some of the more stylistic filters or the CGI monsters (sometimes they looked a bit fake, especially the snake). Black levels are quite strong, and the Dolby Vision application not only adds some nice pop to the primary shades, but also some depth to the more shadowy moments. There’s still some milkiness in the shadows due to the filters, but overall this is an impressive-looking image.


Audio:
By far the best aspect of this package is the stellar Dolby Atmos track found on board. While it has a 5.1 mix, the Atmos track is the center star here, giving us a stunning 5/5 track that uses a mixture of light ambiance, with heavy, intense action sequences once the dinosaurs show up. The first act of the movie is actually rather light, with good surrounds during the BBQ, and some ambient background noise while we focus on the dialog, but things get a lot spicier when the dinos show up around the 40% mark. But it’s the final act where the Platt family is making a desperate rush for safety amidst an entire neighborhood of dinosaurs,s where it kicks off BIG time. Bass is intense and powerful, with slamming feet and roaring of the beasts, and overheads get some heavy workout with the pterodactyls flying overhead, or the screeching off in the distance.


Extras:
• Banding Together: The Making of The End of Oak Street - From concept to execution, explore how director David Robert Mitchell brought his genre-bending vision to
life.
• Every Creature Tells a Story: The Dinosaurs of Oak Street - A deep dive into the research and artistry behind ILM's feathered, scarred, and character-rich dinosaur designs.
• The Spinosaurus Attack: Driving Fear on Oak Street - Breakdown of one of the film's most jaw-dropping set pieces: The Spinosaurus attack.

Final Score: ​

The End of Oak Street is a fun adventure that blends elements of family films, horror, and adventure in strange and unique ways. Some of them don’t always work, but many of them do. I know this got blasted by critics when it came out, but I personally felt it resonated with me a bit more than they did, and I enjoyed it for what it was. A novel take on the dinosaur “back in time” trope with a few twists and turns. The 4K UHD disc looks and sounds great, and while the extras aren’t superb, they get the job done. All in all, I’d give this a single thumbs up and recommend checking it out before you blind buy, but other than that, it should be a fun watch.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Anne Hathaway, Maisy Stella, Christian Convery, Jordan Alexa Davis
Directed by: David Robert Mitchell
Written by: David Robert Mitchell
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 HEVC
Audio: English: Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Core), English, Canadian-French, Castilian-Spanish, Czech, English, German, Italian, Japanese, Latin-Spanish, Parisian-French, Polish DD 5.1
Subtitles: Chinese, Canadian-French, Castilian-Spanish, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, German, Italian, Japanese, Latin-Spanish, Norwegian, Parisian-French, Polish, Swedish
Studio: Warner Bro's
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 99 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: November 3rd, 2026

Recommendation: Decent Watch