The End of Oak Street looks like the original sci-fi gamble cinemas need

TL;DR

The End of Oak Street has finally shown its hand, and it looks like exactly the sort of oddball sci-fi swing that makes a trip to the cinema feel worthwhile. David Robert Mitchell, who has spent years building goodwill with people who like their genre films a bit stranger and a bit smarter, is back with a film that appears to strand an ordinary family in a prehistoric nightmare after some mysterious cosmic event rips their street clean out of suburbia.

That pitch is already doing a lot of work, but the trailer does the most important thing a film like this needs to do: it makes you want to see what happens next. Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor are more than enough to get us through the door, and the promise of dinosaurs, panic and a family trying not to fall apart gives the whole thing a proper Saturday-night-at-the-pictures energy. It arrives on 14 August, and for once “original sci-fi” does not look like code for “a good idea trapped in a forgettable film”.

Still Here? Good

What makes this one interesting is that it does not just feel random. Plenty of trailers can sell you a mad premise. The trick is whether the people behind it seem to understand what sort of story they are telling. Mitchell has always been good at giving his films an uneasy pull, where you are not only following the plot but leaning into the mood and the questions underneath it. That matters here, because “suburban family versus prehistoric chaos” can either become a brilliant bit of pulp or collapse into noisy nonsense very quickly.

The encouraging thing is that the film seems to know its lane. This is not being pitched as hard science fiction, and it does not need to be. It looks like a story about a family under pressure, dropped into a situation big enough to turn their everyday tensions into survival drama. That is the right instinct. The best genre cinema is often just an emotional story with more imaginative weather.

There is still a risk, of course, that the mystery-box side of it all ends up doing more work than the characters. Film lovers have been burned often enough by trailers that promise cosmic weirdness and deliver two decent scenes plus a vague explanation in the final reel. But that is also part of the appeal. Sometimes you want a film to overreach a bit. Sometimes you want to buy the ticket because the premise is bold, the cast is game and the whole thing looks like it might give you one or two images you will still be talking about in the pub afterwards.

And honestly, even if The End of Oak Street turns out to be a slightly formulaic dinosaur chase with a more elegant haircut, there are worse ways to spend an evening. Formula is not a sin when it is delivered with style, scale and a decent sense of story. If this film can manage that, it will have done more than enough.