10 Best Movies If You Like The End Of Oak Street

Published Aug 22, 2026, 9:00 PM EDT

Shawn S. Lealos is an entertainment writer who is a voting member of the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle. He has written for Screen Rant,  CBR, ComicBook, The Direct, The Sportster, Chud, 411mania, Renegade Cinema, Yahoo Movies, and many more.
 

Shawn has a bachelor's degree in professional writing and a minor in film studies from the University of Oklahoma. He also has won numerous awards, including several Columbia Gold Circle Awards and an SPJ honor.

He also wrote Dollar Deal: The Story of the Stephen King Dollar Baby Filmmakers, the first official book about the Dollar Baby film program. Shawn is also currently writing his first fiction novel under a pen name, based in the fantasy genre.

To learn more, visit his website at shawnlealos.net.

The End of Oak Street is a throwback adventure movie, with a small family trying to survive a dinosaur attack when their street block is sent backwards in time. While a lot of the talk is on the dinosaurs, there is a lot more to The End of Oak Street than giant prehistoric creatures. This also involves sci-fi ideas like wormholes, time travel, and more. It is also a family movie that feels a lot like old Amblin movies from years past.

Amblin Entertainment was a movie company created by filmmaker Steven Spielberg in 1975, and it went on to include filmmakers like Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall. This company made movies that shared a strong similarity to the films that Spielberg himself made, often dealing with themes surrounding families battling unforeseen tragedies together, kids in action trying to save the day, and often fantastical experiences involving things like dinosaurs and aliens.

Films from Amblin included titles like Gremlins, The Goonies, Back to the Future, and Jurassic Park. It is easy to see the throughline between these past masterpieces and The End of Oak Street. While many people looking for movies like The End of Oak Street are seeking dinosaur-based movies, there are a lot of other options that fit the same themes and feeling that this new movie establishes.

Jurassic Park (1993)

While there are a lot of movies that connect to The End of Oak Street, the most obvious movie to watch after this new dinosaur movie is the best dinosaur movie ever made. Spielberg directed Jurassic Park in 1993, and it remains one of his most commercially successful movies and is beloved to this very day. There are sequels and a rebooted series with Jurassic World and its sequels, but the original is still the best of them all.

Like The End of Oak Street, there is a sense of needing to protect the children here. While Oak Street has a couple and their kids, Jurassic Park has the grandchildren of the park's owner and the scientists who have to protect them. Jurassic Park also has some of the best CGI dinosaurs ever put on screen, and anyone who wants to see great dinosaur action should always start with this film.

A Quiet Place (2018)

A Quiet Place has a very similar story to The End of Oak Street, but it supplants the dinosaurs with aliens. Instead of a block being transported into a land with dinosaurs, A Quiet Place sees an alien invasion, with blind creatures who hunt by sound. Just like in The End of Oak Street, both films tell the same story of a mother and father fighting to protect their children from the creatures.

The End of Oak Street is an adventure movie above all else, while A Quiet Place is a pure horror movie, with terrifying scenes and horrific creatures trying to kill this family. For anyone who loves The End of Oak Street and also has a love for horror, these two movies offer up a perfect one-two pairing with the story of two people doing anything they can to save their family.

Signs (2002)

Signs is another movie about a family trying to stick together and protect themselves during an invasion. Unlike The End of Oak Street, this is about aliens, similar to A Quiet Place. These are not monstrous aliens like in that horror movie, and they are instead humanoid-looking alien creatures like something from a Spielberg movie, but who are on Earth to conquer the planet.

Like The End of Oak Street, this is about a family trying to find a way to survive this alien invasion. Mel Gibson plays a father who is trying to protect his children (Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin) alongside his brother (Joaquin Phoenix). There is a lot more to this M. Night Shyamalan movie, as Gibson is a former priest who has lapsed in his faith, but in the end, it is still a family trying to survive a monstrous attack.

Super 8 (2011)

Super 8 is a movie that is highly comparable to The End of Oak Street, mostly because of the sense of fun and wonderment involved in both stories. Released in 2011 and directed by J.J. Abrams, Super 8 is a movie that takes place in 1979, when some kids set out to make their own Super 8 movie and then witness a train accident that unleashes a creature upon the world.

Alone and with their parents trying to find and save them, these kids have to survive the creature's attack. There is a lot of heart in this movie, as the kids realize that this alien might not be all evil and that it might need to escape from the governments that are trying to experiment on it. This is an interesting story that plays well alongside Spielberg movies like E.T., and it has the small-town community feel of The End of Oak Street.

65 (2023)

For people who want to see another dinosaur movie that involves a lost sense of time, the 2023 release 65 works well. The movie is set up as a sci-fi movie with a man landing on a planet in his spaceship, only to find himself attacked by monstrous creatures. The twist, which all the trailers spoiled ahead of time, revealed that this man, with his high-tech weapons, was fighting dinosaurs.

The biggest twist here wasn't where the man was located, but when he arrived there. Much like The End of Oak Street, which had the entire block transported back in time to the prehistoric ages thanks to a wormhole, 65 is a movie that shows a humanoid alien (Adam Driver) landing on Earth in the prehistoric era. Both movies rely on this twist to provide an entertaining dinosaur tale.

Journey To The Center Of The Earth (2008)

Based on the 1864 sci-fi novel by Jules Verne, Journey To The Center Of The Earth was adapted several times, with the first arriving in 1909. The version that might be best to watch now is the 2008 release starring Brendan Fraser as a volcanologist named Trevor Anderson, who wants to investigate an area of Iceland after re-reading the Verne novel.

He then, along with his nephew Sean (Josh Hutcherson) and a young girl named Hannah (Anita Briem), ends up falling into the center of the Earth. They end up running for their lives from various creatures, including an albino Gigantosaurus, and anyone who loved the modern-day dinosaur action from The End of Oak Street should love this sci-fi adventure movie.

The Mist (2007)

The Mist is nothing like The End of Oak Street when it comes to the feel of the movie and its overwhelming sense of fun. For anyone who loves the idea of monsters attacking a small town and doesn't mind a sense of dread and one of the darkest endings in movie history, there is a lot to love about The Mist. Based on Stephen King's novella, The Mist is directed by Frank Darabont and is one of the most nihilistic monster movies ever made.

A mist rolls into a small town, and several people are trapped at the local supermarket. While some townspeople believe this is God's wrath, a man tries to protect his son as they become more maniacal. The monsters are deadly, but the humans here are horrific. The end shows that help was coming, but sadly, it was all coming too late. Be warned, there is no happy ending in this movie.

The Host (2006)

Bong Joon-ho won an Oscar for his South Korean movie Parasite, but years before he made that critically acclaimed masterpiece, he directed the monster movie called The Host. This movie has a lot to love for people who enjoyed The End of Oak Street. It is also a brilliant monster movie for anyone who loves kaiju movies like Godzilla.

For the kaiju lovers, this is about a monster that shows up beside the Han River in Seoul, Korea. For The End of Oak Street lovers, this is a movie about a family who fights to protect each other during this monster's attack. This isn't a core family, either, as it is more of a generational family that is dysfunctional at best, but is willing to fight to save each other despite the overwhelming odds.

Gremlins (1984)

The End of Oak Street is a movie that has a strong Amblin Entertainment feel, and there might not be a better movie to describe that feeling than the 1984 Amblin release Gremlins. Directed by Joe Dante, the movie follows a young man whose father brings him a present from Chinatown, a young furry creature known as a mogwai. The creature comes with rules: don't get it wet, don't feed it after midnight, and don't let it in the sunlight.

As expected, things go wrong and when the mogwai, Gizmo, gets wet, it spawns mischievous Gremlins, all led by the aggressive Stripe. When they eat after midnight, they turn into pure forces of evil. Like The End of Oak Street, this family then has to fight the growing Gremlin population and find a way to survive the attacks.

Jumanji (1995)

The original Jumanji shares more in common with The End of Oak Street than almost any other movie. Released in 1995, this movie features a board game called "Jumanji," which at one time in history sucked in a child named Alan who then grew up in the savage land of the game. When two new kids (Kirsten Dunst and Bradley Pierce) find and play the game, they bring Alan back to the real world.

However, several animals and a hunter are also brought into the real world, and the entire neighborhood is under attack from these exotic animals and one dangerous man who wants to add Alan's head to his trophy wall. The End of Oak Street is about dinosaurs attacking a small neighborhood, while Jumanji is about animals attacking, but both have the same premise, and should attract the same audience.