Warning: Spoilers ahead for The End of Oak Street! What would you do if you suddenly awoke to find yourself transported back to prehistoric times? Well, The End of Oak Street answers those questions. Directed by David Robert Mitchell (It Follows), the sci-fi survival film stars Anne Hathaway (Denise) and Ewan McGregor (Greg), a married couple, along with their two children and family dog, who find themselves in that very situation. Of course, with dinosaurs being involved, there are a few character deaths, but anyone expecting the entire Platt family’s survival probably got a rude awakening at the movie’s climax.
The movie ends with Greg’s brutal death by an allosaurus mauling in an attempt to save his family. According to Hathaway, the character was supposed to stay dead. Still, between the time she’d signed on to the movie and when production began, the script had undergone several changes, including the ending. And given how The End of Oak Street pans out, it certainly would have made for a much darker ending if it had been kept the same.
At the movie’s end, Denise and her family, which also includes survivor Jeanette, jump into the very wormhole that transported their street to the Mesozoic Era — only to be transported right back to where they started in 1982 Michigan. Realizing that they’ve only got twenty minutes before the entire neighborhood is swallowed by the wormhole, Denise and Jeanette get to work, notifying neighbors and prompting a mass evacuation. Denise also uses the opportunity to save Greg by ordering a pizza from the company where he worked after he lost his job. He shows up, and the family are reunited as they watch the wormhole consume the neighborhood.
Given The End of Oak Street’s rules regarding time travel, the ending raises more questions than it answers. What does this mean for the past version of the Platt family? And does this mean this version is missing their version of Greg? For Hathaway, the original ending, where Greg remains dead, was her preferred ending, and she couldn’t wrap her head around the change at first. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, The Odyssey star said:
“Greg always died in the script, but in the original movie that I signed up for, he didn’t come back. And that was something that got changed very close to the start of filming […] I have to give all credit to David and J.J. because they had total faith that it was the right thing to do. And they kept turning to me and I was like, ‘Guys, I was so invested in the other version. I have no way of knowing this. I’m just trusting you that this is the right thing to do’.”
However, she came round to the new ending after watching the finished product with a friend whose father had died, who “burst into tears” at the ending, which made her realize that “it’s just what I want from a movie like this.” Hathaway isn’t the only one satisfied with The End of Oak Street; many critics were pleased, particularly as a callback to classic cinema like Jurassic Park. MovieWeb’s Mark Keizer also notes this in his review, though adding that Mitchell manages to make the movie his own while paying tribute to Spielberg.
