Adopting a 1980s classical, Spielbergian sense of wonder, THE END OF OAK STREET is a CGI-heavy dino flick that chickens out of the gorier horror elements that have clearly been sanitised for a wider audience reach.

It has been eight years since David Robert Mitchell divided Cannes with the challenging UNDER THE SILVER LAKE after bursting onto the scene with his excellent paranormal horror IT FOLLOWS. Perhaps in an attempt to play it safe and attract some lost goodwill, he has returned with a simplistic and surprisingly commercial third feature.

Set in 1982 in a trendy suburban neighbourhood, we are introduced to the Platt family, who are mingling during a community street party. Kids ride their bikes until late, play in sprinklers, and there is a summer glow that could last forever. However, Denise (Anne Hathaway) dreams of a world away from her avoidant and emotionally absent husband Greg (Ewan McGregor). She’s even written a manuscript for a novel she’s kept hidden from the family, suggesting this desire; almost an alternate reality just out of reach. Greg keeps picking up pizza delivery jobs to make some extra cash, he says, but maybe it’s just so he’s out of the house.

“The premise is simple and potentially effective, but loses steam and becomes repetitive pretty quickly.”

Their teenage children Audrey (Maisy Platt) and Brian (Christian Convery) know something is up, but there’s the sense that this family is running from the truth. Perhaps they need something, anything to spark them back into life? This very occurrence comes in the form of an inexplicable flash of blue light that transports the family and their entire neighbourhood back to prehistoric times. The Platts must now survive and work out how to get home whilst avoiding being eaten by dinosaurs. The premise is simple and potentially effective, but loses steam and becomes repetitive pretty quickly.

No one in the cast particularly stands out, Hathaway puts in the best performance as Denise and is given a more complex, morally ambiguous mental state, but she mainly does what you’d expect from an action lead. McGregor seems to be on autopilot and the kids are underdeveloped, with Brian relying on a bond with the family dog Starbuck for a sense of emotional depth. There’s a hinted queer narrative for Audrey that is subtly introduced, then immediately dropped. This idea of a monstrous event being the catalyst for characters to appreciate what they’ve got or to reignite their lives has become predictable.

“Mitchell came up through horror and there’s a sense that he’s trying too hard to evoke 1980s nostalgia instead of doing what he’s good at.”

David Robert Mitchell is clearly a talented filmmaker, and many of the sequences are tense, surprisingly nasty, or at least hint at the horrifying reality of the situation. But here lies the greatest weakness. People get eaten, limbs get broken and the reality of starvation and distress creeps up on the characters, but the film is rated a family friendly 12A in the UK.

In what could be a bid for commercial appeal after the divisiveness of his previous project, David Robert Mitchell makes these distressing scenes bizarrely bloodless. The Platts will walk upon a scene moments after a mauling, and only faint specks of bloody footprints will surround the body. Dino’s tucking into dead bodies pick at their meal like vegetarians to avoid the splatter, and the crunchiest moments are moved offscreen.

Mitchell came up through horror and there’s a sense that he’s trying too hard to evoke 1980s nostalgia instead of doing what he’s good at. There is only a conceptual difference between a dinosaur stalking and eating a human and Mitchell’s ghostly STD creation from IT FOLLOWS. Here, the presentation largely dulls the point and impact of the CGI feasting, instead of utilising the smart premise to offer something different. The film desperately wants to be a twist on a STAND BY ME, but is too scattershot in search of deeper narrative meaning amidst the chaos that the overarching themes blend into mundanity.

THE END OF OAK STREET is a mostly forgettable adventure that evokes the better alternatives it seeks to use as inspiration.