The Dog Stars

For all the style that director Ridley Scott can muster — and, admittedly, that’s a whole lot of style — The Dog Stars serves up a post-apocalypse with a heavy sense of familiarity. From recent entries like HBO’s The Last of Us to more vintage classics like A Boy and His Dog and Soylent Green, this latest look at after-the-end examines the indomitability of the human spirit and our innate need for connection and community. Call it apocalyptic positivity, but don’t call it groundbreaking.

That aforementioned style, of course, can’t be ignored, particularly in the breathtaking cinematography by Erik Messerschmidt (Ferrari), turning the film’s many aerial sequences into dazzling vistas of clouds and mountain ranges. (The Italian Alps stand in for the Colorado Rockies.) The bigger the screen, in this case, definitely the better.

Screenwriter Mark L. Smith (Twisters) adapts the 2012 novel by Peter Heller, and Heller’s story about a world wiped out by a flu pandemic hits different for audiences in the COVID era. Hig (Jacob Elordi) and his devoted dog Jasper live on a mountaintop airfield in Erie, Colorado, with only the grumpy and pragmatic Bangley (Josh Brolin) for company. While Bangley obsesses over the possibility of interlopers, Hig periodically flies his Cessna into the ruins of Denver to pick up supplies — which he shares with an agrarian Mennonite community, led by Aaron (Benedict Wong) — and to visit the home he once shared with his pregnant wife, who didn’t survive the epidemic.

After tragedy strikes, Hig sets out to find other survivors, hoping that the existence of a static-y voice (Allison Janney) on his plane’s radio is proof of an enclave at Grand Junction. On the way there, his Cessna suffers engine trouble, and he lands on a ranch owned by the aggressively territorial Pops (Guy Pearce) and his kind daughter Cima (Margaret Qualley). As Hig befriends the father and daughter, and they help him clear out trees to make a runway, they (and, back in Erie, Bangley) must contend with roving bands of feral marauders, seemingly out to quash any remaining signs of civilization.

For all the plotting questions that arise — the apocalypse has gone on long enough to cover Denver skyscrapers with vines, but not so long that Hig can’t still find Coca-Cola products in the ruins? — a veteran like Scott certainly knows how to spin all of this into a fairly engaging yarn, whether he’s throwing in a sudden, unexpected stampede of forest creatures or casting seasoned performers who can breathe life into underwritten characters.

Both Brolin and Pearce seems to be entering their Lee Marvin phase, although Brolin’s performance suggests the screen icon’s more wryly laconic work while Pearce delivers the Point Blank thousand-yard stare. Janney makes the most of her role, but to say more would be to spoil one of the film’s most surprising turns. As for Elordi and Qualley, they have proven their dramatic mettle elsewhere, but all they’re asked of this time around is to provide their movie-star charisma. Their combined powers make The Dog Stars more gripping than it might otherwise be, but it’s not enough to flesh out such a routine tale.

The film indulges in some gratuitous violence, particularly in a nighttime sequence where a camouflaged Bangley repels a group of invaders; this isn’t a zombie movie, so all of the tattooed creeps being shot, stabbed, and blown up are human beings and not mindless creatures. The relish with which they’re dispatched feels a bit off-putting, particularly given the film’s overarching messages of hope for humanity.

The cast must have attended some kind of pre-production summer camp, because this is a movie where people are constantly repairing items, uprooting stumps, or otherwise performing hands-on tasks. This DIY ethos plugs The Dog Stars into a contemporary prepper zeitgeist, building a world where no authority figures are there to save you or even to help you, and it’s up to you and the people you love to take care of each other. Like so much of what the film has to offer, that’s a message that’s already been expressed elsewhere, with greater depth, but Scott and company at least present it in a handsome package.

Director: Ridley Scott
Screenwriter: Mark L. Smith, based on the novel by Peter Heller
Cast: Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley, Allison Janney, Benedict Wong, Guy Pearce
Executive producers: Lily Brooks-Dalton, Brandon Scott Smith, Peter Heller, Aidan Elliott, Raymond Kirk, Marco Valerio Pugini
Producers: Ridley Scott, Michael Pruss, Mark L. Smith, Cliff Roberts
Director of photography: Erik Messerschmidt
Production design: Chris Seagers
Editing: Claire Simpson, Sam Restivo
Music: Harry Gregson-Williams
Sound design: Danny Sheehan, supervising sound editor
Production companies: 20th Century Studios, Scott Free
In English
118 minutes