There is enough in the opening stretch of David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street to echo the Spielbergian blockbuster: the ‘80s American suburbia, chirpy adolescents on bikes, irritable siblings at the dining table and a seemingly-happy family unit led by parents going through a marital hairpin bend of their own.



Denise Platt (Anne Hathaway) aspires to be a novelist and she is secretly working on something that seems borrowed heavily from her own family life. In the novel, she is considering a divorce. In real life, her husband Greg (Ewan McGregor), has just been laid off. He is working as a pizza delivery person, something Denise is not very happy about. However, as much as she tries to bury her disappointment, something extraordinary happens, forcing the family to reckon with their inner cracks.

After a night of fierce lightning and rain, the Platts find their neighbourhood (Oak Street) suspiciously quiet. Having lost power and water, the parents venture out to see what happened. It is only then that they realise their entire neighbourhood has been sucked through a wormhole and now lies in pre-historic times. As a result, there are dinosaurs in their backyard. 

Screengrab from the trailer........

© The Wire