Episode 327 - The End of Oak Street, The Rivals of Amziah King, The Wrong Girls, Nimrods

Starting us off this week, a family fights for survival after finding themselves surrounded by dinosaurs.

This is the end of Oak Street.

We're gonna survive.

Set in the summer of 1982, the suburban neighborhood of Flowervale, Michigan, seems picture-perfect on the surface.

Perfect lawns, friendly neighbors, no cares in the world.

However, not all is well in Flowervale.

The Platt family is secretly falling apart.

Denise, played by Oscar winner Anne Hathaway, secretly writes a fictional novel about abandoning her family...

while her husband Greg, played by Ewan McGregor, hides his job loss by delivering pizzas.

Meanwhile, their teenage daughter Audrey, played by Maisie Stella, worries about affording college, and youngest child Brian, played by Christian Convery, is dealing with typical middle school hell.

Strange phenomena begin happening on Oak Street, including prehistoric plant life appearing overnight, unusual solar flares, and sudden atmospheric shifts.

Following a blinding flash of white light during a late-night storm, the entire neighborhood is severed from modern civilization and transported millions of years into the past.

Awakening to dense jungle terrain, extreme humidity, and roads that have been split into two, the Platts quickly realize their cul-de-sac has been dropped into the Mesozoic era.

Soon after, they find violent dinosaurs are beginning to kill off unsuspecting neighbors, one by one.

Now, the fractured family is forced to work together in order to survive this new and confounding way of life.

When I saw the trailer for this, I predicted it would be a see-it.

And I give this film a...

See-it.

This was an interesting film that, for about the first 45 minutes or so, had a tone that felt very Spielbergian.

The neighborhood setup seemed ripped out of films like E.T. and Poltergeist.

And when the dinos appear and start ravaging through the neighborhood, that tone shifts to a pretty violent one as neighbor after neighbor is confronted by a pissed-off dinosaur.

The director walks a tightrope between pure B-movie creature feature carnage and a razor-sharp, dark sense of humor.

The film is anchored by solid performances from Hathaway and McGregor.

The comedic chemistry between the pair and their equally fed-up children gives the monster mayhem a surprisingly grounded emotional core.

Not even a dinosaur chasing after them, causing them to hide behind a bush, could stop them from bickering about their marital issues.