The End of Oak Street 2026 * * * Stars

UPPER END

It was 1993 and I was just out of high school, going to a packed house to see Jurassic Park. The dinosaurs were pretty nasty in "Park" and well, they're even nastier in The End of Oak Street (my latest review). "Oak Street", yeah it takes place in Michigan until Michigan starts to look like some prehistoric landscape from millions of years ago. "We can't leave." Uh, you got that right chief. You sure got that right.

Reflecting on theropod vehicles of the past and near present, The End of Oak Street is definitely a retread, having denizens run for their lives in order to not get swallowed up by T. rex and its merry meat-eaters. The runtime is a tight 100 minutes, the soundtrack by Michael Giacchino has a certain Afterschool Special residue to it, the setting is 1982, and the old school zoom shots by helmer David Robert Mitchell will have you saying "tubular" before you even know it. "I think our neighborhood and whole street has moved." Yikes. 

So OK, "Oak Street" has solid casting in the forms of Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor and the critics (including this one) have been pretty positive in their nostalgic assessments. Despite a rather pat ending and some cliched tyke characters, The End of Oak Street is still a thrill ride that never lets up, a kind of Spielbergian, Super 8 hybrid that's so suburbia acute you might actually question its PG-13 rating (I initially thought it was a borderline R). I mean if you ignore the fact that "Oak Street" came out in the dog days of summer and it just had to compete with Hathaway's other pic, the massive blockbuster The Odyssey, you'll find a succinct surprise here, a sci-fi wormhole-r that Robert Zemeckis would have made in between Back to the Future and that movie about a rascally rabbit (you know which one I'm talking about). Fleet "street". 

Written by Jesse Burleson

The Last House 2026 * * 1/2 Stars

LAST WORDS

Louis Leterrier (The Takedown, Grimsby, Now You See Me) directs 2026's The Last House. And oh yeah, he did the last Fast & Furious flick (Fast X). With "House", Leterrier takes a fetching premise (being ensnared) and runs with it, blurring the lines between fast-cutting dramedy, sitcom folly, and polarizing, sci-fi horror. His look is purple and prismatic. His zoom shots are zooming. "But we are safe." You think so chief? You really think so?

The Last House, yeah it's a cinematic marathon not a sprint, a 110-minute vehicle with kvetching characters and a thin diegesis that seems stretched out to 3 hours. Torrential rain and sealed up doors and food rationing and aliens oh my! "Go wait in the car." As if we could my optimistic moviegoer. As if we could.

Starring the likes of Greta Lee, Emma Ho, and Wagner Moura and taking place in Seattle, Washington (but shot in England, huh?), "House" chronicles a family of four, confined to their home with no way out. Unlock the doors? Fat chance. Break through the windows? Yeah right. Go through the chimney? Said family could but decide not to. Drive the car through the garage door? Uh, only if you want to get a concussion. Go through the underground sewers? Um, yikers. 

With The Last House, you have to imagine 2007's The Mist without the events taking place in a grocery store or 2021's Girl in the Basement without you know, a basement or last year's Brick but not involving some government-conspired wall. Did you get all that? Good. So OK, watch "House" to see how it concludes but know that certain parts of it are zapped of dramatic momentum. The pic, well it feels like something Alex Garland would make if he was in between cosmic projects on the low. Stone "house". 

Written by Jesse Burleson

A Toxic Love Story 2026 * * 1/2 Stars

TOXIC AVENGERS

"A jealous wife, romantic rivals, blackmail." Yikes. All that's missing is Geraldo Rivera, a camera crew, and some scammers on the low. Oh and don't forget about that polygraph device to keep in handy. Like I said, yikers. 

Anyway my latest review is 2026's A Toxic Love Story, a documentary that despite being a real true-life affair, still unfolds like pure fiction. I mean was Angela Diaz (one of the film's subjects) actually pregnant with twins? And did Angela really fake being diagnosed with cancer? And uh, why are the other denizens involved with "Toxic" so darn thin-skinned? It's not like anyone got murdered and um, no one's bank account was woefully drained. Yeesh!

A Toxic Love Story, well it's a melodramatic enigma, a "cry for help" docu where the town criers spew profanity and painfully gnaw on their 15 minutes of fame. Guy meets girl. Guy dumps girl for another girl. Guy with new girl conspires to put ex-girl in jail through the use of fake emails and/or rape fantasy hoaxes. Did you get all that? Well that's the point to "Toxic", the ultimate bamboozle of a vehicle, the ultimate catfish-er, the ultimate ploy for a viewer to get there total Ricki Lake on. "I wish everyone would just tell the truth." You're preaching to the choir sister. Preach darn it.

Expired, daytime talk show hosts and forgotten media notices aside, A Toxic Love Story is directed by Alexandra Lacey, a twenty-year veteran of TV and Netflix celluloid. Her flick develops quite nicely even if the subject matter is trivial and the jibber jabber during the interviews is trainwreck city. Basically if you want to see a docudrama where the 48 Hours cliche of knowing who the malefactor is because you never hear (or see) present-day accounts from said malefactor, well "Toxic" is that docudrama. Somewhat tainted "love". 

Written by Jesse Burleson

Do Not Enter 2026 * * Stars

ENTER THE VOID

"Sounds dangerous." So quips Diane, an attractive, pseudo victim persona in 2026's Do Not Enter. If only Diane knew what the heck she was getting into. Rats and falling chandeliers and hanging cellphones oh my!

So yeah, I read somewhere on the Internet that Marc Klasfeld (director of Do Not Enter) has only done music videos and this is his feature film debut. It kind of shows. I mean why does main character Rick (played by Jake Manley) get shot putted from a 10-story building only to recover unscathed? And why can't we just let the whole social media rubbish go (live-streaming, YouTube, video content, etc.)? And uh, what's up with the Crawlers showing their ugly mugs again like it's 2005? Yikes.

Anyway Do Not Enter is part horror and part thriller, with not a whole lot of either to come by. The runtime is 91 minutes, with most of those minutes taking place in some haunted hotel in New Jorsey (or New Jersey, I just wanted to write the former). I mean you'd be better off watching Don't Breathe or mid-2000s The Descent, two flicks that Do Not Enter painfully resembles. At least the continuity would be tighter, the editing wouldn't be so irregular, the dialogue wouldn't be so trite, and the ending wouldn't be so darn elated (and live fed of course). 

Helmed by a rookie (Klasfeld mentioned earlier), distributed by Lionsgate (the same people that brought you The Blair Witch Project), and made on a budget of $7 mil ($6 mil more than Blair Witch, that's inflation people), Do Not Enter is about thrill-seeking groups, lots of stashed cash, the supernatural, and ghostly inns. The vehicle despite a few creepy, sanguinary images, fails to shake you as a viewer unless of course you've never seen an independent grindhouse sprucer before. "Do not" look any further. 

Written by Jesse Burleson