Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor lead a time-warped family adventure that turns the American dream into a prehistoric nightmare—and a hilarious second chance.
In theaters August 14, “The End of Oak Street” is the summer movie that asks one simple question: What if your cul-de-sac suddenly had dinosaurs instead of delivery drivers?
The film follows the Thompson family—Sarah (Anne Hathaway), David (Ewan McGregor), and their two teenage kids—as they wake up one ordinary Tuesday to discover that the entire Oak Street neighborhood has been ripped out of the present and dropped into the late Pleistocene. Power lines are gone. Wi-Fi is extinct. In their place: towering ferns, woolly mammoths grazing on manicured lawns, and the occasional saber-toothed cat eyeing the family minivan like it’s a particularly slow-moving snack.
Director Lena Voss (known for the indie breakout Quiet Fires) calls it “The Truman Show meets Jurassic Park, but with better therapy scenes.” The script, penned by husband-and-wife team Marcus and Lila Chen, was inspired by a late-night conversation about what would happen if modern parents had to survive without Amazon Prime. “We wanted to strip away every convenience and see what’s left of a family when the only thing they can rely on is each other,” Voss said at a recent press event.
Hathaway, who earned an Oscar for Les Misérables and has since proven her range in everything from The Devil Wears Prada to The Idea of You, plays Sarah Thompson, a former field archaeologist turned overworked real-estate agent. “Sarah spends the first act in full panic mode—because who wouldn’t?” Hathaway told Variety. “Then she realizes she actually knows how to knap flint and read animal tracks. It was the most fun I’ve had getting absolutely filthy on camera since college.”
McGregor, reuniting with the big screen after his acclaimed turn in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and the Obi-Wan Kenobi series, portrays David, a once-cocky tech startup founder whose smart-home devices are now very, very dumb. “David’s entire identity was built on control—smart lights, meal kits, fantasy football,” McGregor laughed. “Suddenly he’s trying to start a fire with two sticks while his wife is explaining Ice Age migration patterns to the kids. It’s humbling. And hilarious.”
The supporting cast rounds out the block with familiar faces: young actors Riley Chen and Harper Ruiz as the Thompson teens, who go from eye-rolling TikTok skeptics to surprisingly capable mammoth wranglers. Veteran character actor Paul Giamatti pops up as the eccentric neighbor Mr. Kowalski, who greets the apocalypse with the calm of a man who’s been waiting his whole life for the grid to fail.
Visually, the film is a stunner. Practical sets were built on 40 acres outside Albuquerque, New Mexico, where production designers recreated a perfectly ordinary 2020s subdivision—white picket fences, basketball hoops, the works—then let it be slowly overtaken by prehistoric flora and fauna. CGI dinosaurs were kept to a minimum; most of the megafauna were animatronic or trained animals enhanced with subtle effects. “We wanted the audience to feel the dirt under their fingernails,” Voss explained. “This isn’t a cartoon. These people are living in the Stone Age, and it smells.”
At its core, “The End of Oak Street” isn’t just about dodging pterosaurs or learning to forage. It’s about a family that had slowly drifted apart in the blur of carpools, work emails, and screen time, only to rediscover one another when everything else disappears. “The prehistoric setting is the ultimate reset button,” Hathaway noted. “No PTA meetings. No deadlines. Just survival—and the surprising joy that comes with it.”
In theaters everywhere August 14.
