Making good on the promise every Jurassic Park sequel failed to deliver.

It’s the early eighties, and at a block party on Oak Street, fears and ambitions are laid bare. A mom (Anne Hathaway) imagining a different life for herself; a dad (Ewan McGregor) struggling to hold everything together; a son (Christian Convery) dreading the local bully; a daughter (Maisy Stella) daydreaming of anywhere but here. Even their neighbor (P.J. Byrne) is an intolerable fun-sucker, but something else is weirdly going on. While a Shakespearean lack of communication is steadily driving a wedge between them all, the Platt family will find themselves literally out of time on Sunday July 11th, 1982 at 11:05pm… and the local wildlife doesn’t care one iota about their tedious little melodramas.

It Follows creator David Robert Mitchell wrote and directed this what-if sci-fi romp under producer J.J. Abrams and Warner Bros. Rumors have persisted about it being tied to the Cloverfield universe, but nothing has been strictly confirmed. The trailers paint a Spielbergian neighborhood tapping into Poltergeist-like foreshadowing, and that very much works for what’s to come. There’s also the tasty angle of dropping our unknowing protagonists into a happy hunting ground rather than intentional tourists paying to a gawk at a genetically engineered island zoo exhibit, meaning there’s no thirty-foot electrified fences as barriers and no specialized weapons for people to arm themselves with. What are all these yummy humans supposed to fight with, harsh language?

There’s a sense of wonder infused with danger throughout the production once the lightning ball gets rolling, especially as the truth of the situation creeps in. Random nameless screaming victims running from dinos throughout various backgrounds is shamelessly good for a chuckle, but the reality of everything happening in the foreground feels raw in the way the original Jurassic Park turned predictably deadly. It’s nice to actually see dinosaurs vs. regular humans after six Jurassic sequels did everything possible not to give that to audiences, and it’s as brutal as one might imagine. That said, I cannot be the only viewer who thought this was one Sleestak away from “Land of the Lost,” but that’s admittedly a conceit after that bothersome Will Farrell reboot.

While the Platt family is somewhat unlikable right from the beginning, this is also a tell. Everyone is hiding in one way or another, not just from responsibilities but also from themselves, and a healthy dose of running for your lives puts everything else into a new perspective. Are bad decisions made? Of course they are, and the consequences are mind numbing, immediate, and realistic, especially in face of imminent danger. Anyone not rooting for the survivors by the third act has no soul or wasn’t paying attention, but they’re going to be really surprised how it all shakes out in the end. The effects are top-notch with dinosaurs accurate to modern science’s current understanding (read: fur and feathers), and there’s not a genetically modified critter in the bunch.

A few of the subplots feel needless along with perhaps a character or two, but having semi-useless hanger-ons is also believable in the survivor genre. Hathaway deserves the lion’s share of credit running through all the mom emotions, trying to hold everything together upon realizing it’s the only option other than hucking oneself into a dino’s maw. The ending is incredibly complete with a satisfactory denouement confirming any missed subplots… and yeah, you’ll still care more about the dog than the son.

The End of Oak Street is inexplicably rated PG-13 in spite of some strong violent content, bloody images, some strong language, suggestive material, and tasty faces not being exclusive to leopards.

Four skull recommendation out of four