As soon as I saw previews for The End of Oak Street, I thought to myself , "Wait. Didn't they already make like six too many Jurassic Parks?" And then I saw that JJ Abrams was producing it. This sent me rushing to the trusty old internet to find of it could possibly be what I hoped it was.
What did I hope The End of Oak Street was? Well another installment in the Cloververse of course. To my delight, I discovered that I was not alone in putting these pieces together. The part of the internet that had laid dormant at the bottom of the sea, was suddenly awoken. All of the Cloververse crazies were out! Being one of the founding member of these crazies, I jumped right in with them.
If you have not been following me for the past ten years, you may not know that I am obsessed with the Cloververse. What is the Cloververse you might ask? Well it is the universe that began with the 2008 "found footage" movie Cloverfield that continued in 2011's Super 8, 2016's 10 Cloverfield Lane, 2018's Cloverfield Paradox and finally 2018's Overlord. While Super 8, and Overlord were never officially recognized as Cloververse movies, every one of us crazies knows they are part of the universe.
Because it has been almost 8 years since the last movie connected to the Cloververse, I started to worry that Clover (he's the monster) and everything about him was extinct. Than god I was wrong! The End of Oak Street is definitely the rebirth of the Cloververse.
Wait. Maybe you are a normal persona and you aren't into the Cloververse and you just want to know if The End of Oak Street is worth watching. Although I am incredibly biased because I am convinced it is part of my obsession, I did watch with my wife who is a normal person. She thoroughly enjoyed this 90 minute adventure. And what is not to enjoy? An entire neighborhood sees a flash., the next thing they know, man eating dinosaurs are running around their neighborhood and a barrier encompasses the entire neighborhood so no one can escape. Would you like to see a family running around fighting and hiding from dinosaurs? Sure you would. So there you go it is exciting and only 90 minutes long. Oh wait. It is also set in 1982 so it is super nostalgic and fun. It's like the Goldbergs got sucked into the Land of the Lost! But instead of the Goldbergs you have the Platt family.
Now back to why it is connected to the Cloververse. Back in The Cloverfield Paradox, there is a brief mention of five city blocks disappearing. How big is the neighborhood in this movie? I don't know but it seems to be about five blocks!
But here is the smoking gun. In Cloverfield, one of the main characters is named Hud. He is the guy who actually carries around the camcorder so that we can later find the footage of that fateful night in New York City. A little known fact is that Hud's last name is... Platt!!!!! If you don't know why I have multiple exclamation points, look up about four sentences.
Yep. The family in The End of Oak Street is the Platt family. It was also set in 1982. Do you know what year Hud Platt was born? 1987! There is no way Abrams made a movie that fit so perfectly in the Cloververse and then accidentally named the family the same name as a charcater from Cloverfield. So that means Hud, the trusty cameraman is the soon to be born third child of the Platt family. Did they ever tell him they were chased by dinosaurs? Who knows? Maybe that is why he is so eager to film the events of May 22, 2008. His family had one picture of the dinosaurs. maybe he wanted a whole movie.
Anyway, there is a rabbit hole calling my name. see you all in about 6 months.
