Anne Hathaway explores identity, motherhood in ‘The End of Oak Street’
Anne Hathaway teased viewers about the “wonderful but terrifying” nature of her upcoming film “The End of Oak Street,” in which she plays the matriarch of a seemingly ordinary family caught up in supernatural events.
The Hollywood A-lister reflected on the film’s nostalgic feel, saying it has the same charm as the classic Amblin films from the 1980s.
“There’s something wonderful about this movie that is terrifying, but also really wholesome at the same time. I love the idea that families could go and experience this together,” she said. “I think this is a perfect movie for a drive-in movie theater, it’s made for that.”
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“I think about the older kind of scary films, and I could see ‘The End of Oak Street’ being a movie that I would have loved to go see with my family when I was like 11. So, being in a movie that’s part of a legacy like that, that would fit alongside some of the great Amblin movies of the ’80s, feels really wonderful,” she continued.
Speaking about what primarily drew her to the project, Hathaway credited her admiration for director David Robert Mitchell and the opportunity to finally collaborate with him after meeting some decade ago.
In the film, Hathaway brings to life the character of Denise Platt, a wife to Ewan McGregor’s Greg Platt and mom to Maisy Stella’s Audrey and Christian Convery’s Brian. After two decades of being a wife and a mother, her character finds herself questioning her identity and her life’s purpose.
“She’s at a point in her life where she’s beginning to wonder, is this all? My kids don’t need me so much. Is this how I see my life unfolding?” Hathaway said of Denise. “She’s the sort of woman who lived during a time when a lot of women went from their father’s home to their husband’s home. I don’t think she really had a lot of time to explore who she was.”
As Denise seeks answers about herself, her family is suddenly jolted by supernatural occurrences in their neighborhood, including the appearance of dinosaurs.
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“On the surface, they’re a very normal family… The kids have secrets. Greg has a secret. Denise has a secret. But it all feels like big, yet gentle, stuff, although their secrets are keeping them apart,” Hathaway said. “And then this really huge, supernatural thing happens that pushes them together and forces secrets to come out. And they become more than a family, they become each other’s means for survival.”
Expressing her excitement over the film’s theatrical released, Hathaway continued, “I’m so thrilled because I’ve seen the film… And now that I look back at the process of getting there, I feel like I got to learn a lot from it, because we weren’t making something that was prepackaged; it was coming straight from David’s imagination. And it feels really cool to be a part of something original.”
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“The End of Oak Street” is set to premiere in Philippine theaters on Aug. 12.