I am a big fan of writer-director David Robert Mitchell. His breakthrough high-concept horror film, It Follows, was a seminal moment for the genre, one that heralded the beginning of a new era for horror as a whole. Emerging from the torture porn and found-footage riffs that had dominated the ’00s was this delightful throwback, rooted in ruthless suspense, painstaking cinematic craft, and a synth-heavy score to boot. In the years that followed the release of It Follows, an entire new generation of young horror filmmakers would break into the industry, from Robert Eggers to Julia Ducournau, Ari Aster, Jordan Peele, and beyond.

But unlike many of those filmmakers, whose debut films would ultimately be cemented alongside It Follows as modern classics of the genre, Mitchell’s career hit an unexpected snag following his sophomore film, Under the Silver Lake. The hugely ambitious neo-noir had more in common with the works of Richard Kelly than it did with those of his present-tense peers, and it resulted in Mitchell being put on Hollywood’s back burner in many ways, which was a tremendous shame.

So, from the moment it was announced that The End of Oak Street would be a new film both written and directed by the filmmaker, I was immensely excited. And now, having seen Oak Street, I am delighted to say it is a true return to form and an absolutely cinematic blast.

TOP FIVE THINGS ABOUT “THE END OF OAK STREET”

5. No Punches Pulled

My sole apprehension heading into The End of Oak Street was that it would feel far less like a David Robert Mitchell film and far more like a J.J. Abrams joint. In addition to being a filmmaker in his own right, Abrams has become a prolific producer over the years, and not all of those collaborations have gone particularly well. It seemed entirely feasible to me that this could be Mitchell simply playing things as straight-up-the-middle as possible, trying not to rock the boat.

Fortunately, that is very much not the case. The End of Oak Street is a delightfully odd and completely distinct film that feels entirely Mitchell’s own. Rather than shying away from his idiosyncrasies or sanding off the harder edges of his style, Mitchell leans all the way into exploring them further here than ever before. The results are both hugely audacious and remarkably accomplished.

4. Giacchino’s Incredible Score

Michael Giacchino is a heavy-hitter when it comes to the world of musical scores. The man has been delivering routinely excellent work for decades now, with a vast and varied output. This is the same guy who literally just scored Spider-Man: Brand New Day, so he’s got range. But his score for The End of Oak Street is an absolutely decadent throwback, and it fucking rules.

Oak Street blends together science-fiction and horror influences from across multiple decades, whether it be the ’50s with The Twilight Zone or Them!, the ’60s with Planet of the Apes, or the late ’70s and ’80s with Carpenter and Spielberg staples. Giacchino’s score blends elements from across these influences into something big, bold, and perfectly accentuates Mitchell’s film in all the right ways.

3. The Performances

Led by Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, the central family of the Platts feels like a real, living organism within the film. While there has been no shortage of media over the past decade-plus that has tried to mimic the dynamics and structures of Amblin films (looking at you, It, Stranger Things, etc.), few, if any, have gotten as close to the substance of the real thing as Mitchell and his performers do here.

There’s real heart, heft, and pathos to the Platts that makes you care all the more about them when the dino-related mayhem begins. In many ways, the caliber of performance that Hathaway and McGregor are turning in also feels like a throwback to those early Amblin days, where you could see Academy Award-winning performers laying it all on the line in service of a slice of pulpy genre cinema. The leading duo here similarly goes for broke in such a completely unabashed fashion that it is nothing short of delightful.

2. The Visual Language

The End of Oak Street is packed to the gills with David Robert Mitchell and his go-to DP, Michael Gioulakis, taking bold cinematic swings. From VFX-loaded oners to split diopters to elongated zooms, the film is full of fascinating, motivated, and varied visual flourishes, all of which are absolutely compelling. There’s a presence and impact to the film, even when it’s just family members sitting around in their living room talking, that is so sorely lacking from many blockbuster efforts today.

I also have to talk about the zooms in particular for the sheer ingenuity on display. So often, a zoom shot is thought of as something that achieves a singular purpose, with the camera zooming in on a single thing. Here, Mitchell and Gioulakis will string together multiple elements across multiple planes and capture them all in a single zoom shot. It feels like being pulled through the story visually in this exceedingly elegant fashion, and it was just wonderful.

1. Ruthless Suspense

I am a huge admirer of well-crafted cinematic suspense. People like Alfred Hitchcock and John Carpenter are obviously masters of this, and it’s apparent that David Robert Mitchell is a disciple who worships at their altars. The End of Oak Street features multiple set pieces with some of the most layered and intricate suspense-building I have seen a feature film achieve in years.

In the simplest of terms, suspense stems from the audience knowing something that the characters on-screen don’t, with the filmmaker utilizing that gap between audience and character to their advantage. Mitchell employed these techniques to great effect back with It Follows, which wore its Halloween influences on its sleeve, but The End of Oak Street demonstrates a far more comprehensive insight into all of this on a much larger scale. It’s honestly reminiscent of the leap between Halloween and The Thing for Carpenter, with Mitchell achieving the same kind of multi-tiered suspense on this grand canvas. It’s really staggering stuff.

RGM GRADE

(B+)

Altogether, The End of Oak Street is a riotously great time at the cinema full of shock, suspense, and thrills. It is the kind of David Robert Mitchell film I had been hoping to see again for years, and the filmmaker absolutely did not disappoint.

Will Jones