The End Of Oak Street Ending Explained: Does The Platt Family Survive The Dinosaurs?

This article contains major spoilers for "The End of Oak Street."

Director David Robert Mitchell ("It Follows") is back with his first movie in nearly eight years. "The End of Oak Street" is part of a bizarre summer dinosaur movie showdown alongside "Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie." The movie is an old-school, Amblin-style, sci-fi romp featuring time travel, a star-studded cast, and yes, lots of dinosaurs. It's a wild ride and one of the relatively rare non-"Jurassic" dinosaur movies we get these days, giving us plenty to discuss.

The movie takes place after a mysterious cosmic event rips Oak Street from suburbia and transports their neighborhood to a prehistoric age when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. The Platt family soon discovers that their survival depends on sticking together as they navigate their now-unrecognizable surroundings, filled with deadly creatures that are very unfamiliar to humans.

"The End of Oak Street" quickly cements itself as one of the best dinosaur movies that isn't "Jurassic Park," of which there are shockingly few. It also sticks the landing, ascending beyond its fun premise to deliver a wholly satisfying cinematic experience. Even an otherwise great movie can be ruined by a bad ending. Fortunately, Mitchell, with the help of mega-producer J.J. Abrams, managed to pull this one together.

It's also an ending that leaves the viewer with a lot to unpack, with many questions that might need answering. That's precisely what we're here to do. We're going to take a thorough look at the movie, what goes down in the final minutes, what it all means, and what it might mean for the future.

"The End of Oak Street" takes place in the early '80s and centers on the seemingly idyllic Platt family. A mom, a dad, two kids, and a dog named Starbuck — a "Battlestar Galactica" Easter egg the director wasn't shy about. But cracks show themselves quickly. There are marital issues between Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor), who has to leave a block party to go deliver pizzas to make some extra cash.

Meanwhile, Denise has been working on a book she's been hiding from her family, as it seems to be an avenue for her to explore her desire to move to a new city and start a new life. Brian (Christian Convery) is acting out, while Audrey (Maisy Stella) seems to have trouble connecting with her peers.

Then, it happens. After seeing some mysterious lights a couple of nights in a row, the lights hit critical mass and transport the entire Flowevale block millions of years into the ancient past, smack dab in the middle of dinosaur country. The Platt family and everyone on Oak Street are forced to contend with this unbelievable reality, where dinosaurs are hunting people down like prey. Houses are fortified. Plans are made. It all seems hopeless.

Things get increasingly chaotic. Neighbors are picked off one by one. There are no roads out of Oak Street. Supplies are running dry. After days of hopelessly exploring and surviving in the distant past, Denise and Greg discover a bizarre bubble that appears to be a portal back to their time. However, it disappears. Their plan? Find another bubble, get the kids, and jump through it in order to escape this prehistoric hellscape.

After spending a night out looking for Starbuck, Brian and Audrey come across Jeannette (Jordan Alexa Davis), a neighborhood girl the siblings save from a dino attack. Jeannette's parents died, and after reuniting with their parents, the Platts take Jeannette in. The family bonds that were breaking begin fortifying amidst the "survive or die" of it all.

Then, an Allosaurus attack changes everything. As Denise and Greg try to protect their kids from the beast, Greg strikes it with a hammer — and it strikes back. It bites off Greg's leg before eating him as the whole family watches in horror. Denise is crushed, but as a fire encroaches on the street, they discover another wormhole near the Librarian's house. This is their ticket out of there, even if they must undergo the journey heartbroken.

After fighting off a giant snake, pterosaur attacks, and more dinosaurs inside the house, they make it to the wormhole, which appears and disappears in multi-second intervals. Jeannette successfully makes it through, but Brian botches his jump and injures his leg. Again, the family must make their way through the house in the hopes of jumping through the wormhole together.

After a harrowing ordeal, the family makes it through the hole and back to the outskirts beyond Oak Street before the wormhole incident took the street back to the past. Jeannette voluntarily goes back in hopes of finding her parents, while Denise uses a payphone to order a pizza, thereby saving past Greg from being transported away.

Thus, "The End of Oak Street," David Robert Mitchell's thrilling and heartfelt dinosaur adventure, reaches its seemingly happy conclusion. Or does it?

The movie's epilogue shows what happens two years later. Denise ended up writing a book, aptly titled "The End of Oak Street," that sold quite well. She was applauded for her efforts to save several community members, including the librarian. The world had to contend with the dinosaurs that were swapped out for the neighborhood of Flowervale. The Platt family and Jeannette's family mingle at a BBQ. All seems well, but this requires a closer look.

For one, we see not one but two versions of Jeannette. Jumping through that wormhole created some issues with the timeline. The version of her from the past was still alive, and since the version of her who survived the dinosaurs had warned her family about what was coming, they all lived. So, we had two Jeanettes. This is where things get a little dark.

Denise deliberately called and ordered a pizza to save Greg, which she did. But what about the other versions of Denise, Brian, and Audrey? The implication is that they were sent back to the past to die. The two-year-later epilogue makes no mention of others returning through wormholes. To make one happy family again, sacrifices had to be made, and calculated ones at that.

David Robert Mitchell did make one of the best horror movies of the 21st Century with "It Follows," so it stands to reason that he would hide some darkness in and amongst this seemingly happy ending. It's happy on the surface, but bleak in so many other ways. One version of Greg still died a horrible death. Other versions of Denise, Brian, Audrey, and many others met similar fates with no hope of rescue.

This is to say nothing of the many people who probably died because of the dinosaurs transported to 1982. Even though this is sort of positioned as an '80s throwback adventure movie with a slightly more violent edge, there's a fair amount of darkness hiding just under the surface of the ending of "The End of Oak Street."

Is there room to further explore that darkness and the implications of messing with the timeline in a potential sequel? The movie doesn't explicitly tee up a follow-up. Yes, there may be some lingering questions, but not necessarily enough to fuel an obvious sequel. That said, David Robert Mitchell does enough worldbuilding to suggest that a continuation of some sort could be done. Maybe there's a movie where we see what happens to the dinosaurs in our world, rather than the other way around.

More likely, if Warner Bros. wants to turn "The End of Oak" street into a franchise, they would take the "Clovefield" approach. And not just because J.J. Abrams is also a producer on that franchise. There's a big sci-fi world implied in the movie. Where else might these wormholes manifest? What other chaos might they cause? "The Cloverfield Paradox" connects to the other "Cloverfield" movies but largely stands on its own. It's not terribly difficult to imagine a follow-up more akin to "10 Cloverfield Lane" as opposed to "Cloverfield 2."

As always, that's more of a financial consideration than a creative one in the realm of big studio filmmaking. As it exists, this movie pretty much stands on its own two feet as a one-and-done dino blockbuster.

"The End of Oak Street" is in theaters now.