David Robert Mitchell knows how long to leave a threat in view before a character notices it. We rate him highly when that patience extends to his characters; his scripts are less reliable when the spectacle takes over.
Fi1m perspective
In The End of Oak Street (2026), the afternoon light stays warm and flat even after a suburban street lands in a prehistoric world. Cinematographer Mike Gioulakis keeps the houses looking ordinary, which makes a creature crossing the grass more disturbing. Production designer Maya Shimoguchi supplies the driveways, screen doors and cluttered garages that give Mitchell somewhere familiar to stage an attack. He lets a shape linger at the edge of the frame before anyone turns round.
That attention to everyday surroundings runs back to his first feature, the suburban Michigan coming-of-age drama The Myth of the American Sleepover (2010). It Follows (2015) turned his interest in young people towards supernatural horror, and remains our strongest recommendation. The Los Angeles noir Under the Silver Lake (2018) followed, with less assured plotting. By The End of Oak Street, he is making science-fiction survival on a larger scale, though the people still need the same care.
We were frightened by It Follows because its pursuer's steady walking pace gives us so much time to dread its arrival. Maika Monroe makes Jay Height's distress matter between scares. Mitchell allows Jay's friends to care for her, and the tenderness between her and Keir Gilchrist's Paul makes their safety worth worrying about. Those quieter exchanges are part of why the horror works: we want these young people to have time together without being afraid.
The difficulty is deciding what Jay can reasonably do to protect herself. The curse passes through sex and the pursuer changes appearance, but Mitchell leaves its rules loose enough to distract us from her fear. We start testing the screenplay when we should be watching for danger. That is a frustration in a film otherwise so attentive to its characters.
The End of Oak Street has a larger problem, despite Anne Hathaway's work carrying the film. Mitchell establishes a troubled marriage and resentments between neighbours, then lets the attacks interrupt rather than develop those difficulties. The dinosaurs remain frightening, but too much of what we have been asked to care about goes unused. Start with It Follows; save The End of Oak Street for an evening when well-staged scares will be enough.
Biography
David Robert Mitchell is an American film director, writer and producer. Born on 19 October 1974 in Clawson, Michigan, he studied at Florida State University. His feature debut was the coming-of-age drama The Myth of the American Sleepover (2010).
Mitchell received wider recognition with the supernatural horror film It Follows (2014), which he wrote, directed and produced. He followed this with the neo-noir Under the Silver Lake (2018). In 2026 he wrote, directed and produced the science-fiction film The End of Oak Street.
