The End of Oak Street saw its ending rewritten at the last minute

I suppose 'what if your whole cul-de-sac got teleported back to the dinosaur era?' isn't the question you expect a film to treat seriously, but here we are. The End of Oak Street, the latest from David Robert Mitchell (the fellow behind It Follows), plants Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor squarely in the middle of the Mesozoic, all in the name of high concept, slightly bonkers sci-fi. If you're looking for survivalist drama, bloody dinosaur attacks, time travel head-scratchers, and a family pizza reunion, this one's throwing the lot at you.

The Plot Flings Itself Into the Past

Hathaway plays Denise, opposite McGregor’s Greg – a married couple with two kids and a dog, waking up one morning on what used to be suburban Michigan and is now quite inconveniently situated in the land of velociraptors and giant ferns. There are casualties (it is dinosaur territory, after all), and those expecting the entire Platt clan to emerge unscathed from this cosmic joke probably left the cinema blinking in surprise. Greg, bless him, gets graphically offed by an allosaurus during a heroic last stand to save his family. That's where the script was meant to leave him, and Hathaway, for one, signed her deal thinking so.

So far, so bleak. But before you start accusing Mitchell of making the Paleolithic answer to Threads, all is not as it first appears. At the climax, Denise, her now smaller family unit (plus survivor Jeanette), leap back into the wormhole that stranded them in prehistory—dropping them right back in 1982 Michigan, on their original street, with only twenty minutes to avert the exact same catastrophe. This time, muscle memory and trauma intact, Denise and Jeanette mobilise the neighbours for a rapid evacuation drill. Greg is still dead… but hang on.

Denise, quick-witted, rings up the pizza place where Greg was working after losing his job, ordering food just to set eyes on him again in the 'present'. And thus the whole gang, dog included, are awkwardly but sweetly reunited as history’s wobbliest wormhole eats the neighbourhood.

The End of Oak Street saw its ending rewritten at the last minute, swapping a bleak sacrifice for a crowd-pleasing reunion.

How Hathaway Found the Change

The big debate was always about Greg’s fate. Originally, the script stuck with the idea that once eaten by an allosaur, that’s your lot. Hathaway, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, admitted she was baffled by the switch to the more upbeat ending, particularly after investing in the tragic version. She gives credit to Mitchell and producer J.J. Abrams for their creative decisiveness, but had doubts of her own at the time. Here’s Hathaway, explaining her reaction after being told Greg would actually reappear:

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'.

The turnaround for Hathaway came after watching the finished film with a friend whose father had died – the friend ended up crying at the ending, which ultimately convinced Hathaway the new version worked. That’s not exactly what you expect from a dinosaur wormhole movie, is it?

Time Loops and Dinosaur Trauma

If you’re confused by the time-travel logistics – multiple versions of the Platt family, duplicate Gregs, possible paradoxes – you’re not alone. The film lays the ground rules but somehow raises more questions than it settles. Is there a spare Greg wandering around 1982 Michigan? Don’t look to this film for tidy closure. Instead, it leans into that sense of cosmic oddness, borrowing half its DNA from Jurassic Park but throwing in its own distinct strangeness, much to the delight of certain critics. Mark Keizer at MovieWeb even points out that Mitchell is clearly having a tribute moment to Spielberg, while also keeping the film’s own, distinctly peculiar personality intact.

• Cast: Anne Hathaway (Denise), Ewan McGregor (Greg), with family, family dog, and Jeanette in tow
• Director: David Robert Mitchell
• Production twists: Script and ending were changed just before filming, swapping out a tragic death for a slightly more sentimental wrap-up
• Noteworthy: Partly inspired by classic '80s nostalgia, with clear nods to Spielberg but a much weirder time travel logic