The End of Oak Street — Review

David Robert Mitchell has one of the most eclectic filmographies of any director working today. He first emerged on the scene with 2010’s The Myth of the American Sleepover, a coming-of-age summer movie that authentically captures the awkwardness of adolescence, before following it with his breakout horror hit It Follows (2014). Then came Under the Silver Lake (2018), a neo-noir black comedy that was poorly received by critics but remains, in my opinion, the closest anyone has come to making something truly Lynchian in the last decade outside of Lynch himself. It’s fitting, then, that a moment in Mitchell’s latest film, The End of Oak Street, specifically reminded me of Twin Peaks: The Return. With only four features, Mitchell has already run the gamut of genres. His latest is a sci-fi dinosaur movie steeped in ’80s nostalgia. Whether audiences love or hate his work, one thing is certain: each of his films is unmistakably distinct.