We can thank Jasper, a loyal, protective German shepherd. He keeps marauders at bay and this story in focus, if only tenuously.
Sir Ridley Scott, at 88 years young still crafting meticulous narratives for the big screen, here draws his inspiration from Peter Heller’s post-apocalyptic novel, published in 2012. For the director of such classics as Alien, Blade Runner, Black Hawk Down and Gladiator, this picture amounts to a kind of idyll, but with an ominous edge and occasional bursts of violence.
The Dog Stars plays out episodically in Colorado, in the near future, in the aftermath of a flu pandemic which has devastated the global population, both physically and emotionally. A young pilot named Hig (Jacob Elordi, Euphoria, Wuthering Heights), along with a cynical survivalist, Bangley (Josh Brolin, Avengers, Dune), have hunkered down at an abandoned rural airport. Hig, laconic to a fault, regularly takes his vintage prop plane–a 1956 Cessna in the book–on reconnaissance missions in the nearby mountains and beyond to Denver, in order to fish and gather supplies, including ammunition, while delivering goods to a devout Mennonite community led by Aaron (Benedict Wong, Shang-Chi, Spider-Man). Hig grieves the loss of his pregnant wife, Melissa, in the pandemic, and he feels compelled to return to the house where they had lived an “ideal” life, in his imagination.
After a rather convenient mechanical issue with his plane, he crash lands near another isolated compound, a ranch. Cima, a former doctor (Margaret Qualley, Poor Things, The Substance) lives there with her hyper-vigilant, military veteran father, Pops (Guy Pearce, The Brutalist).
Having barely escaped a hoard of feral Reapers, they head in the direction of an intermittent, mysterious radio signal emanating from a functional airport in Grand Junction. An ex-“stewardess,” Darlene (Allison Janney, The West Wing, I, Tonya), runs the facility with a creepy, messianic clarity and exceedingly black humor.
The Dog Stars has a certain symmetry to it: three principal venues and three action-packed set pieces. It has impressive cinematography from Erik Messerschmidt (an Academy Award winner for Mank) and a suitably atmospheric score by the prolific Harry Gregson-Williams (Gladiator II, The Gilded Age), along with an amusing nod to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. What it lacks is consistent pacing and taut storytelling.
The straightforward screenplay, co-written by Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) and Christopher Wilkinson (Nixon), leans heavily into individual character more successfully than broader themes or philosophy, such as grief, trust and humanity. The soulful Hig mourns his wife and his dog. Bangley and Pops bluster and shoot. Cima longs. They all have their moments, but they don’t populate a sufficiently cohesive tale. Religion–or any sort of belief system–goes relatively undeveloped between the nostalgia and loneliness on the one side and the inevitable (if professionally staged) violence on the other. As a result, Darlene’s declaration that “It takes a lot of faith to keep searching” fails to register as strongly or ironically as it should. We do get ironic product placement, though, with the sight of decaying fast food restaurants and a flickering arena screen.
To be sure, Ridley Scott has not completely lost his touch. He still has a keen eye for faces, gestures, adventure and nature. (Southern Italy stands in for the mountains of Colorado, in this case.) He has no fewer than eight additional movies in various stages of development at this point, including another Alien picture. Yet given the rich thematic possibilities inherent in a story of an unforgiving, dystopian world, the “idyllic” coda to The Dog Stars speaks more to unfulfilled promise than a universe of hope.
