David Robert Mitchell
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Jurassic Park (1993)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced The End of Oak Street (2026)
Themes Visuals
…the reality of everything happening in the foreground feels raw in the way the original Jurassic Park turned predictably deadly.
Had 6-year-old Sy gone to this in the theatres instead of Jurassic Park, I don’t think I’d have developed my passion for dinosaur films.
It may boast the same PG-13 rating as the Jurassic World, series but Oak Street makes all its kills look like an episode of Barney & Friends.
It doesn’t hurt that it might be the best “Jurassic Park” movie since the original.
Seventy percent of The End of Oak Street plays like a love letter to Jurassic Park and Spielberg at best…
The Jurassic Park franchise in particular struggled with inserting the prehistoric beasts into an urban setting…
His opening shot, with its placid suburban street, reminds you of Haddonfield, Illinois, where Jamie Lee Curtis was pursued in “Halloween,” and the director of that movie, John Carpenter, supplied a throbbing electronic score that is constantly echoed here.
Alongside knowing visual echoes of Halloween , there’s a deep vein of John Carpenter in the simple but unnervingly effective electronic score by Disasterpeace, which runs from almost subliminal background booms to crunching, sometime strident dissonance (I’ve just listened to some on my laptop, and even heard this way they’re still deeply troubling).
But there are also times when the camera itself turns threatening, prowling the quiet suburban streets in eerily smooth tracking shots that hark back to John Carpenter's slasher classic, Halloween.
The teenage cast gives subtle, sympathetic performances, grounding this wild terror in reality, while the cinematography and assaultive score openly recall the cinemascope suburbia and savage synths of John Carpenter’s Halloween while building on the influence and deepening it.
The inspiration from John Carpenter’s “Halloween” (1978), extending to the eerie, electronic musical score, is unmistakable and used to great effect.
By echoing John Carpenter's Halloween (not in terms of narrative but it nearly every other way that matters), director David Robert Mitchell has announced that he won't be bound by the limits of modern multiplex horror tropes.
The Long Goodbye (1973)
Directed by Robert Altman
influenced Under the Silver Lake (2018)
Themes Music
Also casting his eye back to the 1970s—an early vision of a topless apartment dweller pointedly alludes to Robert Altman’s ’73 classic, The Long Goodbye—Mitchell is aiming for no less than to make the great modern noir and the great modern film about Hollywood.
Much like Robert Altman’s sarcastic take on Philip Marlowe, The Long Goodbye, Mitchell’s movie is a surreal, stoned portrait of L.A. that doubles as an oddball mystery.
The Long Goodbye or Inherent Vice , but blurs its edges with a vaguely unsettling surrealism, goosed by a terrific throwback score.
Mitchell has now tried his hand at an L.A. noir with Under the Silver Lake, which owes as big a debt to The Long Goodbye, Mulholland Drive, and Inherent Vice (to mention but three of the most conspicuous referents) as it does Thomas Pynchon’s labyrinthine, paranoia-laden narratives.
To a list of films about Los Angeles that includes “Inherent Vice,” “The Long Goodbye,” “Chinatown,” “Mulholland Drive” and “L.A. Confidential,” we can add “Under the Silver Lake,” which is available on VOD and has its area premiere Friday at the Brattle Theatre.
“Under the Silver Lake” unfolds in the same cinematic wheelhouse as Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye,” “Arthur Penn’s “Night Moves,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s Pynchon adaptation, “Inherent Vice,” and David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” — films in which mysteries lead only to further mysteries and the rot runs deep under sunny California skies.
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Directed by David Lynch
influenced Under the Silver Lake (2018), The End of Oak Street (2026)
Themes
…a mystery tale with DNA that can be traced back to David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.
It’s no Mulholland Drive, but the point of Under the Silver Lake rhymes with themes from David Lynch’s masterpiece: that lifetimes of watching others has instructed us in how to be watched ourselves.
You see, Mitchell is attempting to transform what might sound like a routine search for a missing woman into a surreal journey through a wormhole Hollywood, one chock-full of allusions to old movies, from Hitchcock and The Long Goodbye to Inherent Vice and especially Mulholland Drive (David Lynch’s presence looms over the whole film).
Janet Gaynor es la actriz favorita de la madre del protagonista de Lo que esconde Silver Lake, película que propone un viaje a través del espejo de la Meca del Cine de la mano (o bajo la influencia) de guías tan diversos como Anger, David Lynch –en particular el de Mulholland Drive (2001)-, Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, Kim Deitch, Thomas Pynchon, Foster Wallace y Robert W. Chambers, entre otros.
The mix of high and lowbrow makes little sense, as if Robert Mitchell watched Mulholland Drive and Inherent Vice and his biggest complaint was you couldn’t get stoned watching them.
Easier to follow than Paul Thomas Anderson’s bumbling “Inherent Vice” but less masterful in thematic execution than David Lynch’s enigmatic “Mulholland Drive,” “Under the Silver Lake” is a mystery predicated on bored fixation.
The trailers paint a Spielbergian neighborhood tapping into Poltergeist-like foreshadowing…
Something akin to “Poltergeist” or “Gremlins” where another filmmaker gets to be darker and crueler than the director usually is while also investigating the suburban family and Americana through a dark genre lens.
The kids feel descended from the adolescents of “E.T.” and “Stand by Me.” There’s “Poltergeist,” “Jaws,” and obviously “Jurassic Park” all over the place.
…while echoes of E.T., Poltergeist, Gremlins, and The Goonies reverberate through its suburban setting and family dynamics.
…as well as set decoration soaked in the pop-culture of the era (which recalls Tobe Hooper's "Poltergeist")…
His return is a commercial genre period piece set, not accidentally, in 1982, prime time for Amblin and Spielbergian movies like E.T. and Poltergeist…
A film that shows its influence, Smile recalls The Ring in its loose “seven days to live” concept, and It Follows insofar of its personification of the abstract as an invisible virus that spreads through nefarious circumstances.
Frankly, Finn’s screenplay about how a traumatic protagonist deals with an unseen entity is nothing new because it instantly reminds me of David Robert Mitchell’s far superior It Follows (1995) starring Maika Monroe.
In addition, the tone and Larry W. Brown’s art direction have an “Insidious” (2010) meets “It Follows” (2014) vibe, where monstrous acts can appear during daylight hours through ordinary experiences, like a child’s birthday party or a simple living room conversation.
Director Parker Finn must have been heavily influenced by David Robert Mitchell’s 2014 indie smash hit, “It Follows,” because “Smile,” his feature film directorial debut, pays homage to that movie in almost every way.
Seasoned horror fans won’t find very much new here: the chain-letter ghosts of It Follows and The Ring, the inherited-mental-illness-as-demonic-entity of Hereditary, a healthy dollop of the ooey-gooey horror manga of Junji Ito (to say nothing of the music videos of Aphex Twin, whose Richard D. James could probably sue if facial expressions were covered under copyright law).
Smile is director Parker Finn’s first feature film and takes a concept similar to what was seen in It Follows, and tries to amp up the unsettling looks.
The End of Oak Street is, at its heart, a feature-length Twilight Zone episode…
…the film is essentially an oversized episode of The Twilight Zone (1959-1964)…
“The End of Oak Street” also shows another important influence for Mitchell: “The Twilight Zone,” and the way Rod Serling’s classic series could use horror and science-fiction tropes to explore timely stories of human frailty and resilience.
If you ever wanted to know what it would be like if you placed Anne Hathaway into a Jurassic Park film or The Twilight Zone, you found your answer in watching her performance in The End of Oak Street.
…it operates on a distinctly Twilight Zone-type of logic…
Writer-director David Robert Mitchell has crafted an unashamed Twilight Zone meets Jurassic Park throwback.
Jurassic World (2015)
Directed by Colin Trevorrow
influenced The End of Oak Street (2026)
Visuals Themes Plot
Some of the violence feels unnecessarily cruel (think Jurassic World)…
Both of them straight‑up curbstomp the entire Jurassic World series like Peter, Michael, and Samir did that printer in Office Space.
With Jurassic Park, and more recently Jurassic World, near-monopolising movie dinosaurs, the arrival of The End Of Oak Street immediately begs an obvious question.
There is carnage. But there isn’t much gore, so while the (literal) head count is high, this isn’t as mean-spirited in its kills as Jurassic World, while the family is resourceful, sympathetic and believable.
They don’t rely on the fan-favorite dinosaurs from the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World franchises, choosing to fill in their universe with other dinosaurs.
…he’s landing closer to the Jurassic World films…
Jaws (1975)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced The End of Oak Street (2026), Under the Silver Lake (2018)
Visuals Themes Plot
…the presence of producer JJ Abrams makes it quite a bit easier. That's even without the bits lifted from Jaws, ET, and, of course, Jurassic Park.
The film features a handful of attention-grabbing split diopter shots (composed in a manner similar to how Spielberg utilized them in "Jaws")…
It’s a loving homage to Steven Spielberg and The End of Oak Street less rips off Jurassic Park, ET and Jaws and more relies on audiences' love for those films and the nostalgia they are imbued with to bring a fresh take to the ‘Spielburbia’ sub-genre.
…the Jaws-to-Jurassic Park method of withholding the monsters as long as possible reeks of a bygone era of Spielbergmania…
There’s “Poltergeist,” “Jaws,” and obviously “Jurassic Park” all over the place.
What WB’s The Meg was to Jaws, The End Of Oak Street is to Jurassic.
Something akin to “Poltergeist” or “Gremlins” where another filmmaker gets to be darker and crueler than the director usually is while also investigating the suburban family and Americana through a dark genre lens.
…while echoes of E.T., Poltergeist, Gremlins, and The Goonies reverberate through its suburban setting and family dynamics.
…not to mention gems like The Goonies and Gremlins…
Mitchell seems to have crafted a film paying homage to Amblin projects such as E.T. the Extra-terrestrial, Back to the Future, Gremlins, and, most importantly, Jurassic Park.
His own "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" as well as Joe Dante's "Gremlins" infamously pushed the boundaries of the rating system at the time.
What's "Gremlins" if not a warning against complacency with technology and the abuse of the natural world?
Inherent Vice (2014)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
influenced Under the Silver Lake (2018)
Themes Characters
Whereas Paul Thomas Anderson found a kind of wisdom and humility in the random and meaningless connections of his narrative in Inherent Vice , Mitchell only validates all his fears in Under The Silver Lake.
Following on the heels of his celebrated sophomore film, the STD horror film It Follows (2014), Mitchell further defines the trenchantly white, heteronormative perspective evidenced in his earlier film with a hapless, undefined male protagonist who seems inspired by a legion of aimless literary mouthpieces (think P.T. Anderson’s take on Pynchon in Inherent Vice but with the barest wisp of a back story).
You see, Mitchell is attempting to transform what might sound like a routine search for a missing woman into a surreal journey through a wormhole Hollywood, one chock-full of allusions to old movies, from Hitchcock and The Long Goodbye to Inherent Vice and especially Mulholland Drive (David Lynch’s presence looms over the whole film).
Others compared it favorably to Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, a critically adored film that I personally loathed.
Easier to follow than Paul Thomas Anderson’s bumbling “Inherent Vice” but less masterful in thematic execution than David Lynch’s enigmatic “Mulholland Drive,” “Under the Silver Lake” is a mystery predicated on bored fixation.
Mitchell has now tried his hand at an L.A. noir with Under the Silver Lake, which owes as big a debt to The Long Goodbye, Mulholland Drive, and Inherent Vice (to mention but three of the most conspicuous referents) as it does Thomas Pynchon’s labyrinthine, paranoia-laden narratives.
Vertigo (1958)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
influenced Under the Silver Lake (2018)
Music Visuals Themes Plot
Rich Vreeland’s voluptuous orchestra score goes full Vertigo, brewing a menace that Mitchell consistently undercuts with banal, dopey details: Who is the mysterious pirate in blue jeans running across a lawn?
When she and Sam formally meet, she emerges from the shadows into the light in a moment incredibly reminiscent of Kim Novak in Vertigo.
There are clear references to Rear Window, Vertigo and Mulholland Dr. but, as with the writer-director’s previous outings, the new film draws from his influences to sculpt something personal and specific.
Obstensibly a neo-noir thriller about a young man searching for woman he had a brief but apparently meaningful flirtation with, it is both an attempt at an homage to films such as Vertigo and Mulholland Drive, and yet seeks to find its own voice for a younger generation who would find themselves reflected in a more contemporary Los Angeles setting.
The first 20 minutes alone are a high-wire mash-up of two Hitchcock classics, “Rear Window” and “Vertigo,” with Andrew Garfield playing a sort of a dissolute millennial Jimmy Stewart in 2011 Los Angeles.
There are times when I think of this as a reconstruction of Vertigo, right down to the way Sam follows (ahem) someone in their car.
Us (2019)
Directed by Jordan Peele
influenced by It Follows (2015), Under the Silver Lake (2018)
Themes Visuals
Peele’s homework for his sensational star, Lupita Nyong’o, included, according to Entertainment Weekly, “The Birds,” “The Shining,” “Dead Again,” the original “Funny Games,” “The Sixth Sense,” “A Tale of Two Sisters,” “Let the Right One In,” “The Babadook” and “It Follows.”
With the help of cinematographer Mike Gioulakis, up to his It Follows mischief, and a score by Get Out composer Michael Abels that is built to shatter your nerves, the action never lets up.
El director de fotografía Mike Gioulakis, quien anteriormente fue responsable de ideas inusuales en Under the Silver Lake y It Follows , evoca imágenes en pantalla que son mucho más artísticas y expresivas que la mayoría de sus colegas.
With POV camera angles orchestrated by the cinematographer of It Follows, it’s easy to imagine being there… and really wishing to be somewhere else.
The scenes that bookend Us's more conventional scares take us to dark, hidden places that cinematographer Mike Gioulakis (It Follows) fills with oily, sinister bursts of color.
The first sequence in particular is a sublimely constructed piece of horror cinema, recalling the likes of It Follows , in how it builds tension and inevitability.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced The End of Oak Street (2026)
Visuals Themes
…not just ‘80s suburbia, but the suburban ideal of Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.”
The End of Oak Street slams Jurassic Park into Close Encounters of the Third Kind…
Everyone remembers the eye-popping mother ship connection at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Fewer people recall the disturbing “crybaby” sequence. The people behind this flashback do, however, and their tribute is filled with those kind of raw, emotional, rough-edged moments in between full-on dino carnage.
…the old-school frosted-yellow water glasses that look borrowed from the Neary family in Close Encounters of the Third Kind…
“Scream” is hip with the times much in the same way its predecessors were, throwing nods to Rian Johnson, “It Follows” and “Hereditary” and playfully toys with audience expectations.
Scream is hip with the times much in the same way its predecessors were, throwing nods to Rian Johnson, It Follows and Hereditary and playfully toys with audience expectations.
What’s the most impressive about this installment of Scream is how much fun it’s having, poking fun at the horror genre, with characters referencing films such as It Follows or Hereditary , but also riffing on the Stab series in its own Scream universe.
In the movie’s opening phone call, one that mirrors the call Drew Barrymore received in the original, Tara (Jenna Ortega) — after initially ignoring a strange call on “the landline” — tells the strange voice on the other end (again Roger Jackson, franchise MVP) that she prefers “elevated horror” like “The Babadook,” “Hereditary” and “It Follows.”
No more last-century horror shoutouts when the kids have such newbies as "It Follows," "Hereditary" and "The Witch" as reference points.
While there are plenty of meta jokes and cool, hip references to The Babadook and It Follows, the film still feels dated.
Southland Tales (2007)
Directed by Richard Kelly
influenced Under the Silver Lake (2018)
Visuals Themes
But in terms of awkward career progressions, it seems inevitable that the lurch from It Follows to this swollen dramatic sprawl will draw comparison to Richard Kelly's banana-peel slip from the mesmerizing genre-bending of Donnie Darko to the overreaching mess of Southland Tales, which also premiered in competition at Cannes.
Moments like that make the Southland Tales comparison apt.
It’s very reminiscent of what happened to director Richard Kelly when he followed cult favourite Donnie Darko (2001) with the ambitious but convoluted Southland Tales (2006) and singlehandedly ended his promising career.
(Richard Kelly, for example, has managed to make only one film in the 13 years since Southland Tales .)
Mitchell’s work here could be most easily compared to that of gonzo auteur Richard Kelly, the man behind Donnie Darko (which I can’t stand), Southland Tales (which I find crazy in all the right ways), and The Box (which I have no opinion of).
Writer-director-producer David Robert Mitchell, who revolutionized the modern horror genre with his 2014 feature It Follows, was ambitious to the point of rashness with his neo-noir mystery Under the Silver Lake, which glimmers with nods to many noirs past: the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski, Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice — plus Vertigo… and Rear Window… and Richard Kelly’s post-Donnie Darko incoherent slog of a feature Southland Tales.
…while echoes of E.T., Poltergeist, Gremlins, and The Goonies reverberate through its suburban setting and family dynamics.
…not to mention gems like The Goonies and Gremlins…
Par for the course for many ‘80s gems like Back to the Future and The Goonies, the film plants its seeds in the fractures of the family’s complicated dynamic.
…less eager to win the audience’s love, than classic Amblin comps like The Goonies…
She Dies Tomorrow (2020)
Directed by Amy Seimetz
influenced by It Follows (2015)
Visuals Themes Plot
Seimetz wisely gives the film a stark tone and borrows elements from “It Follows” to help manifest what our country might be feeling right now.
Suddenly Amy’s insistence that it’s her last day on Earth appears to be catching, a bit like the surreal, sexually transmitted curse of It Follows.
The film also feels like a nod to the psychological thrill of David Robert Mitchell’s 2014 It Follows, as both films rely heavily on the imaginary superhuman power that torments the protagonists.
Indeed, a type of existential dread akin to that of “Mulholland Drive” and “It Follows” lies at the root of “She Dies Tomorrow,” which was set to premiere at the 2020 SXSW Film Festival, before the event became a casualty of the contagion.
Not unlike It Follows, which with She Dies Tomorrow would make a bleak and harrowing double feature, this monster is relentless in its destruction.
Seimetz isn't exploring a virus that spreads through physical contact, as in David Robert Mitchell's It Follows, but through psychic contact.
Like the equally memorable opening scene of the recent horror movie It Follows , the initial moments of Get Out are a reminder that no matter how domestic and low-key the film becomes at other times, it’s first and foremost a horror movie, with an agenda of unsettling the audience, then scaring the hell out of them.
The latest in a great craze of social parable horror (It Follows, Under the Shadow), Jordan Peele’s Get Out begins by turning America’s racist-stereotype of “black man as a threat” into a black man threatened.
"Get Out" nestles into similar territory as recent auteur horror films "It Follows" and "The Witch," which transcend the genre by blending classical dread and shocks with comedy and/or big ideas.
The social critique has lately felt more pointed than usual, with recent popular horror movies about sex ( It Follows , The Witch ), motherhood ( The Babadook ), bullying ( Unfriended ), and even white supremacy ( Green Room ) reminding us that what counts as horror is often simply a matter of who we are.
At the same time, good horror films still preserve visceral terrors: the creepalicious soundtrack of Marienbad , the inexorable march of death in It Follows , and the primal superstition in Babadook that words have more than symbolic power.
A night-time sequence, in which Walter runs out of the darkness towards Chris, has the same sense of American gothic dread as David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows , while the humour vacillates between the broader strokes of Rusty Cundieff’s underrated Tales from the Hood and the insidious cruelty of Lars von Trier’s Manderlay .
Back to the Future (1985)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
influenced The End of Oak Street (2026)
Themes Plot
Mitchell seems to have crafted a film paying homage to Amblin projects such as E.T. the Extra-terrestrial, Back to the Future, Gremlins, and, most importantly, Jurassic Park.
Par for the course for many ‘80s gems like Back to the Future and The Goonies, the film plants its seeds in the fractures of the family’s complicated dynamic.
If you are a fan of Jurassic Park, Jumanji and Back to the Future and you are missing that era of cinema, then this movie might be right up your Oak Street.
The End of Oak Street had plenty of huge twists, especially during its thrilling conclusion. Because after Ewan McGregor's Greg sacrifices himself, he's resurrected when the family returns to the '80s and stops him from being sucked up in the wormhole that moved the entire neighborhood.