The End of Oak Street (2026), by David Robert Mitchell

 

Once there was Spielberg, then J.J. Abrams translated his oeuvre for our terribly disenchanted Nolanesque era, and now 52-year-old Robert Mitchell attempts to bring some of the old magic back (with a dash of Carpenter in the mix). It is impossible for an age when the moviegoing public is either too adult or critically contaminated by the (Spielbergian, too, but for a TV audience and that makes a world of difference) Stranger Things aesthetics.

Well, that makes absolutely no difference to me. I enjoyed almost to the full, minus the occasional script lapses when a couple of plot mechanisms are rather obvious and not entirely magnetic (the Starbuck vehicle of getting the kids out of the house is implausible) and the feminist touches/queer subtleties that seem to turn the male characters to the 11 of obnoxiousness. Never mind.

Truth be told, however, the latter serves perfectly a couple of allegorical readings of the text, which (1) call for a conflicted white-female fantasy of empowerment, chain-breaking and author-itative (sic) release from the hopeless, flawed patriarchal domesticity. The wormhole plot, which of course is the movie, could be the fantasy of both women of the family (the daughter reads Carl Sagan and the Apollo 11 “First on the Moon” book, the wife is an aspiring author – the first gets a girlfriend, the other devours her husband!), or, in a more topical version of the scenario (2), it represents in liberal terms the current US presidential nightmare alternative of the Reagan-era fairy-tale (that Hollywood created and fueled) the beginning of the film represents. 

Try that for a wicked critique of ‘80s representation. 

Along those lines the ending is understood both as a typical therapeutic Hollywood ending, as well as an ambiguous Lynchian satire (DRM is no foreigner to that sensibility) since who knows what awaits them all upon return in the house.

Still, all of the above, though well-put and entertaining, do not a fine movie deliver. That can only happen when you have a master director in the helm, one who sees more in showing (the) less (possible), a creator of fine-tuned set-pieces, and someone who can strengthen an homage with enough stylistic detail and tonal ambience to thrill the shrinking audience of a cinema (not yet) lost.