Anne Hathaway's Jurassic World Meets Cloverfield Movie Arrives This Month

The Jurassic World franchise has dominated the dinosaur movie genre for decades, after Jurassic Park revolutionized practical effects, becoming one of the greatest movies of the 1990s and still holding up today. Even now, the best dinosaur movies and TV shows look to Jurassic Park as a benchmark, as its sense of adventure, relatable characters, and occasional nightmare fuel moment were the perfect combination. That said, it is time the genre had a shake-up, and of all Anne Hathaway's upcoming movies, this Cloverfield-like dinosaur adventure might be the movie to do it.

When lights appear in the sky over their peaceful suburban neighborhood, the Platt family think nothing of it, until dinosaurs emerge through the perfectly-trimmed hedges and start causing chaos. The premise for The End of Oak Street sounds fairly typical of a monster movie, but there is a twist. The End of Oak Street's trailer shows that it is not the dinosaurs that are out of place, but the street itself, having been uprooted to a strange prehistoric location. The trailer has the tone of a fun adventure movie, while hinting at a connection with an entirely different project.

The End Of Oak Street Combines Jurassic World's Theme With Cloverfield's Mystery

Jurassic Park's first sequel, The Lost World, featured a scene straight out of a horror movie, with a T-Rex rampaging through a San Diego neighborhood at night. Many scenes in The End of Oak Street's trailer share this moment's DNA, but there are a few differences that suggest that while the movie shares a theme with Jurassic World, its tone might be a little different. Most of the scariest scenes in the Jurassic Park franchise happen at night, but some of the explosive action scenes in The End of Oak Street happen in daylight, making the movie feel less frightening.

The trailer's campy tone and PG-13 rating suggest that it may be more of an adventure than a horror, despite The End of Oak Street trying to recapture Weapons' strategy by using mystery to great effect. The trailer immediately raises questions concerning how Oak Street was moved, and a portal opening in the house suggests there could be extraterrestrial involvement. This layered mystery is producer J. J. Abrams' signature style, which became apparent through his work producing the Cloverfield movies, and with The End of Oak Street sharing this feature, some speculate a closer connection to the iconic horror series.

How The End Of Oak Street Connects To Cloverfield

The End of Oak Street, which also stars Ewan McGregor, was previously named Flowervale Street, which viewers have pointed out sounds so similar to Cloverfield that some have suggested The End of Oak Street is secretly a Cloverfield movie. The end of the real Oak Street in Santa Monica, California, is at Clover Park, which is either a stunning coincidence or an Easter egg for what is to come. Cloverfield even has a character named Hud Platt, and with the central family in The End of Oak Street also having the surname Platt, the coincidences keep coming.

The upcoming movie shares a team with the Cloverfield franchise through J. J. Abrams and Bad Robot. While this is no guarantee of a connection between the two, the similarities do not stop there. The Cloverfield Paradox centers on parallel universes, and at one point the movie shows that the particle accelerator was relocating parts of the world, with a news scroll stating "five city blocks just disappeared." Oak Street does not resemble a city, but the size of the displaced neighborhood could easily be five blocks.

While writer and director David Robert Mitchell told SFX Magazine (via GamesRadar+) that he wrote the script before talking with Abrams, he has also said that regarding how the neighborhood ended up in its new prehistoric location, “there are certainly some answers in there." He did not clarify if this was Cloverfield-related, but if so, this would not be the first time that Abrams had turned a movie into a Cloverfield entry. With The End of Oak Street arriving in theaters this month, we will not have long to wait to find out.