The summer box office for 2026 is already the biggest post-COVID showing since 2023, when the Barbenheimer phenomenon dominated multiplexes, and is on course for the biggest post-2019 summer full stop. But July and now August have seen a feast-or-famine effect similar to 2023, with another Christopher Nolan blockbuster coexisting with another all-ages IP-driven smash.

This year, The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day are clearly bringing people into theaters with spectacle and characters that aren’t getting the eh-wait-for-streaming treatment. The rest of August doesn’t have anything likely to scale those heights, or even become Obsession or Backrooms-level surprise hits. It does, however, have one last old-fashioned summer movie that’s just as theater-worthy as almost anything else this season: The End of Oak Street, a dinosaur thriller movie starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor. It’s a throwback that keeps finding ways to hook and startle an audience that might no longer find CG dinosaurs quite so novel after seven Jurassic Park movies.

The basic sell of Oak Street at first sounds borderline shameless in its cross-breeding the ’90s Steven Spielberg who made the first two Jurassic Park movies with the ’80s version who inspired a whole subgenre of suburban-kids-on-bikes adventure movies with E.T. and other (mostly lesser) films from his Amblin production company. Neither DNA source sounds particularly promising. Though the later-period Jurassic sequels have been fun, they trade on images and effects that the movies themselves were forced to admit have become less special over the years. Imitation Amblin, meanwhile, has become a particularly tired move for middle-aged nostalgics.

But David Robert Mitchell, the writer-director behind The End of Oak Street, has a thornier and more thoughtful relationship with nostalgia than a simple reverie over how Spielberg used to make ’em. Mitchell’s most famous film so far is the contemporary horror classic It Follows, where a mysterious supernatural figure slowly stalks its human prey, a curse that can only be forestalled by sex contact that “passes” the ghost on to the next person. (But if that person dies, the previous target is next on the queue!) It sounds like a particularly lurid Friday the 13th ripoff; it plays like an elegy for the end of childhood, as its teenage-to-twentysomething protagonists attempt to fend for themselves in suburbia.

The End of Oak Street isn’t quite so moody, but as much as Mitchell and producer J.J. Abrams seem conscious of what movies they’re imitating (there are literally kids on bikes at one point), Mitchell can’t seem to resist infusing this fantastical adventure with some genuine despair. After setting up Denise (Hathaway) and Greg (McGregor) as a suburban couple experiencing plenty of whispered strife that doesn’t go unnoticed by their older teenager daughter Audrey (Maisy Stella) or younger son Brian (Christian Convery), the whole family is mysteriously zapped back into what appears to be prehistoric times, sort of like Land of the Lost, but without a series commitment to keep them all alive.

Technically, they’re not alone; their entire neighborhood has been transplanted, several square miles of disconnected suburban real estate now sitting in the middle of a jungle and overrun with creatures of various shapes and sizes. Mitchell subtly nods to how easily suburban cordiality can break down, not by having neighbors turn on each other but by simply not showing much of them — though plenty are seen from a distance being dragged away screaming as voracious dinos attack. Moreover, he never loses sight of how horrifying this adventure is, and how hopeless Denise in particular feels about the family’s prospects of survival. There’s no easy way out in the short term when dinosaurs are rampaging, and no easy way out of the broader situation.

That makes the movie sound less than fun, but once the family gets displaced, the pacing has rollercoaster intensity, and may inspire similar screams of delight. (At my screening, an audience mixing journalists, influencers, and regular moviegoers was more vocal than any I’ve experienced this year, at press or commercial screenings. In the parlance of a ciger-chomping studio exec of old, this thing played.)

Mitchell isn’t focusing on the scale of his images, the way that Nolan’s Odyssey does, nor do his characters soar through the action with the same quicksilver likability as the Brand New Day ensemble. But his camera placement still rewards a big-screen viewing. Sometimes he plays clever, quiet games of hide-the-dino, something Gareth Edwards toyed with on last year’s Jurassic World: Rebirth. And sometimes he simply photographs his distressed family in memorable and well-blocked ways, using split-diopter shots for capturing pairs of emotional reactions together in the same disorienting frame.

It’s to his advantage, of course, that he’s capturing the faces of Hathaway, McGregor, and two unusually well-modulated young actors. All four leads have the opportunity to play some emotional moments without much dialogue, and Mitchell’s trust in that is a balm compared to the relentless talkiness of so many blockbusters that claim to be spectacle-driven (or, worse, claim to have “heart”). Though it’s far from silent, the movie thrives on visual storytelling, which makes it a particularly worthy theatrical experience, whether or not the screams, gasps, or laughs materialize with your particular crowd.

By the end, the emotional catharsis may not match the risky high-wire act the actual Spielberg himself performed earlier this summer with Disclosure Day and its divisive ending. The new movie certainly doesn’t haunt you like It Follows, which was more slow-burn than carnival ride. But The End of Oak Street feels perfectly in keeping with the summer’s-end vibes that Mitchell has brought to his past indies, imported into the last actual big-budget extravaganza of the summer movie season. Though the film is set in July, it’s tailor-made for a movie theater in August.

The End of Oak Street is now in theaters.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.