A family of four (mom, dad, son, daughter) and their dog has their lives upended. Dad is having a hard time providing, but then finances take a back seat when monsters show up at the door of their quiet suburban home. The actors playing the parents are critically-praised talents who have earned prestigious nominations and won awards.
You can opt to watch one version of this film at the cinema or you could watch another version on streaming.
“The End of Oak Street” is a sci-fi/ family survival horror/ dinosaur movie with some comedy thrown in. It’s set in the ‘80s so it has elements of “Jurassic Park,” “Stranger Things,” and the Spielberg movies of the era.
Denise and Gregg Platt are played by Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor. The pace gets brisk after the characters and their situations are established, they soon find out they’ve been taken out of their timeline and now coexist with dinosaurs.
As an aside, Anne Hathaway has been having a banner year with “Mother Mary,” followed by the successful sequel to “The Devil Wears Prada,” and the even more successful “The Odyssey.” After this, she’ll be in “Verity.”
“The End of Oak Street” is a park your brain at the door kind of movie where you shouldn’t think too much about the logic of the event and the time travel angle.
In “The Last House,” Wagner Moura (who recently received acclaim for his performance in “The Secret Agent”) and Greta Lee (whose performance in “Past Lives” remains unforgettable) are Ann and Jason Delgado — who find themselves trapped in their home during a seemingly endless arrival of a race of creatures from the deep. Who needs a 4DX cinema when we have profuse relentless rain in the city?
It’s sort of like being stuck indoors during the pandemic but worse — the doors and windows seem to be glued shut, there’s no WiFi, and no Grab — the family eventually has to get creative to find sustenance.
“The End of Oak Street” features over a dozen types of dinosaurs, while the more somber and somewhat slower “The Last House” has one type of creature which looks like a cross between Cthulhu and the “Pirates of the Caribbean’s” Davy Jones; it does many types of water — rain water, ocean water, flood water, sewer water and more.
“House of the Dragon” just had its season finale — now there’s a family with real, scary monsters. The real monsters are not the dragons but rather the inner demons and monsters of so many of the show’s characters. And how does one ever escape those? Westeros needs therapists and they are nowhere to be found.
The recently ended season started out strong with the Battle of the Gullet and ended even stronger with the Battle of Tumbleton and the events surrounding it. The battle scenes did not romanticize war, instead it revealed the great human toll, the waste of lives — including that of too many innocents. The two factions cling too hard to power, too tightly to what they feel is rightfully theirs and the cost of doing so grows at a tragic rate.
This penultimate season is the best one yet — it is intense, full of twists, turns, and shifting tides. Power and the quest for it can do strange things to people.
The one with dragons by the way, has the best acting, not the ones with the Oscar nominees.
“The House at the End of Oak Street” is out in cinemas, 4DX theaters and the IMAX. “The Last House” is on Netflix and “House of the Dragon” is on HBO Go.”
