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What’s more thrilling than watching dinosaurs try to eat people alive on the big screen?
Watching dinosaurs try to eat people alive on the big screen in 4DX, as unveiled in a special preview of “The End of Oak Street”
on Saturday night in Los Angeles.
In the sci-fi movie from “It Follows” director David Robert Mitchell and producer J.J Abrams (working under his Bad Robot banner), married couple Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor) must fight to save their family once a cosmic event rips through Oak Street, relocating their home from their familiar, ordinary neighborhood.
A crowd of journalists and influencers previewed 14 minutes of new footage, presented in 4DK: Denise and Greg exit their house in a desperate search for their dog, Starbuck (an affectionate nod to “Battlestar Galactica”), leaving their two kids behind, played by “My Old Ass” breakout Maisy Stella and “Sweet Tooth” lead Christian Convery. But a baseball bat and shotgun as weapons can only do so much as Denise and Greg split up, travel across their vast suburban neighborhood, narrowly cheat death from a speedy dinosaur (as shown in the original trailer) and attempt to escape in their family car — only to discover that not only has Oak Street been mysteriously relocated, but they have been plopped right into the world of roaming dinosaurs, in all different sizes and terrifying types.
It’s safe to say there’s no easy escape from Oak Street.
The audience giggled nervously as their seats rocked and rolled during the tense chase scene, and whenever the dinosaur went in for an attack, a squirt of water shot out from behind each audience member’s seat. Mitchell entered the theater just after the clip ended and was delighted by the immersive effects. “Especially seeing the seats shifting with the driving!” he remarked, laughing, too.
Mitchell — who stopped by while on a break from production on the highly anticipated “They Follow” — told the crowd of journalists and influencers how he imagined plopping dinosaurs into suburban life: “The idea of a normal neighborhood was something that is so fantastical. I thought the merging of those two things would be interesting, grounding the spectacle.”
Beyond being advertised as an end-of-summer blockbuster, Mitchell and Abrams emphasized that “The End of Oak Street” is anchored by the core family dynamics. “The brilliance of what you wrote is that each of the characters has a secret, essentially. Each of the characters has something they’re wrestling with, but they’re a family that you so connect with and so root for and believe in,” Abrams said. “It’s not a sadistic movie. It’s got a big heart at its core.”
Mitchell explained that he needed a cast “that brought a certain level of performance and naturalism to the family so that we could really be drawn in.” He said, “They are us. It’s the idea of being able to view ourselves. They are a traditional family.”
For example, Hathaway’s Denise was written as a loving mother with her own ambitions. “There’s this conflict of, ‘Where am I in my life and how am I connecting to the people I care about?'” he said, adding, “Each of the kids has their own issues. They are all put into conflict, and those issues are elevated when they find themselves in this incredibly dangerous situation.”
Mitchell went on to explain how he switches perspective between Hathaway and McGregor’s characters as they discover the horrors spread across their neighborhood, including one moment when an older neighbor is found dead on their floor near a trail of blood. “It’s really about the subjective and the objective, finding ways to express a moment, visually, in an interesting way,” he said.
Michael Giacchino, who scored all three “Jurassic World” films and “The Lost World” video game, brings a tense, eerie atmosphere through the music heard in the footage. “He identifies, like any great composer, the heartbeat of the scene, something you might have been aware of,” Abrams said. “He will excavate something, emphasize something, and all of a sudden, everything gets elevated because of it.”
Abrams compared “The End of Oak Street” to a great episode of “The Twilight Zone.”
“On one hand, you sort of know what you’re going to get, but you really don’t know what you’re going to get,” he explained. “The story is so specific and unique to these characters and so emotional. When I go to the movies, my dream is to just be taken and to experience a wealth of emotions and things, and get to have a really full meal. It’s rare to do that in a movie that is a genre film.”
“The End of Oak Street” will roar into theaters Aug. 14 from Warner Bros. Pictures. In addition to being shown in select 4DX theaters nationwide, the Warner Bros film will be shown in Imax.
