The End of Oak Street

Hailey gives The End of Oak Street a 2 out of 5 on the Popcorn & Prayers Pop Score. An eighties neighborhood dropped into the Mesozoic era, with a marriage on the edge of divorce at the center of it. The marriage message is genuinely good. But the gore is far heavier than Jurassic Park and a few dismissals of God land like they were inserted, and between them I can't recommend the film.

Content notes for The End of Oak Street — Romance — strong: Denise and Greg kiss several times, which fits the story and is honestly part of the point. Beyond that: their teenage daughter and the neighbor girl they rescue are clearly written as more than friends, with hand-holding and meaningful looks, nothing explicit. The son sneaks a look at what's plainly an adult magazine. And two dinosaurs mate in the background of a scene while Denise stops to photograph it, played entirely for a laugh.. Violence — severe: This is the headline and I want to be blunt about it. I was expecting gore — the trailer itself shows a woman being eaten on her own porch — but they really lean into it here, much more than Jurassic Park ever did. Those films kept a lot off screen, or in shadow, or in the dark. This one holds the shot. People are eaten on camera, repeatedly, and the camera doesn't cut away when you expect it to. A man's leg is torn off. Someone is pulled apart in the air. A dinosaur bites down on a person's head. Bodies are left lying in front yards while other characters run past, and in more than one shot something is still eating them. A stampede crushes a car with people inside. A neighbor is found dead in her own kitchen. There's a vehicle explosion, dinosaurs shot with handguns and shotguns, one struck in the face with a sledgehammer. Blood is on the pavement, the sidewalks, the floors, and the rooftops for most of the runtime. Separately from all the dinosaur material, a teenage boy is beaten bloody by another kid, and we learn that same kid once sabotaged a boy's bike and broke his arm.. Language — severe: Around a dozen s-words, one or two f-words, plus the usual middle tier. The one I'd flag is God's name used as a swear about five times, and one of those sits right next to a scene where a character is dismissing God, which made it hit worse.. Scary/intense — severe: Sustained and real for most of the movie, and it's the domestic kind — your driveway, your kitchen window. This is not a monster you get to file under fantasy. It's set in a house that looks like yours, and that's exactly why it works and exactly why I wouldn't hand it to a young teen..

The movie's actual belief system is simpler than its dialogue lets on: the family is the last thing standing when everything else is stripped away, and love is proved under pressure. That's a decent instinct and it produces the best scenes in the film. Where it goes wobbly is on what saves the marriage. In this story, catastrophe does. The dinosaurs do the work a counselor would have done. Denise and Greg remember each other because something is trying to eat them, and the film seems to genuinely believe that's a happy ending. Which leaves you with a question it never asks: what happens on the Tuesday after? The swipes at faith sit on top of all this rather than inside it. They're not a coherent argument the movie is making, they're just a few dismissals it wanted on the record.

Here's our age-by-age take for The End of Oak Street — 0-9: Skip; 10-13: Skip; 14+: Skip. Overall we'd say it's best for 17+.

It's rated PG-13 and we think it's best for 17+. On our 1–5 Pop Score, The End of Oak Street earns a 2/5. A marriage on the edge of divorce, dropped into the Mesozoic era. The marriage message is real and I loved it. The gore is heavier than anything Jurassic Park ever put on screen.