The Dog Stars ★★

Director Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars is steeped in grief. Set in a post-apocalyptic world after a flu eradicated most of the population, the characters are engulfed with the immensity of this loss. Their family members. The small things, like going to the grocery store. An entire way of life is gone, and all that is left in its wake is trying to survive. The Dog Stars is a film about finding a will to go on, about carrying the grief with you and not letting it drive you into despair. It is heavy, melancholy, and elegiac, a moving remembrance for those left behind and for the living to carry with them a hope that there is a tomorrow.

The Dog Stars opens with Hig (Jacob Elordi) and his dog Jasper traveling via Hig’s plane into depopulated Denver to get supplies. Hig once lived in the city with his wife and Jasper, but she died during the flu outbreak. He still visits their home, which has been kept mostly untouched and exists as a shrine to the life that he once had with her. He sits on their bed, ruminating and stewing in the feeling of loss. Before long, Hig will return to the compound he now resides in with his ex-military survivalist friend Bangley (Josh Brolin). As much as Hig mourns the loss of his family, he also mourns the loss of connection and civilization. Bangley was made for this, a man who likely planned for such an occasion and is more than ready to fight for every inch of soil he has laid claim to in this world. Hig wants that sense of community and when a message comes in over the radio – one he has heard infrequently in the past but has never been able to make contact with – from Grand Junction, Hig is ready to fly there, leave Bangley and his compound behind, and try to make out a new life with other survivors.

The Dog Stars is often slow, soaking in the serene surroundings and sights that Hig flies over. This is where the film is at its best, both in delivering gorgeous aerial shots and in exploring the wealth of emotion stewing in its characters. Hig’s journey to Grand Junction finds him encountering Cima (Margaret Qualley) and her dad Pops (Guy Pearce) out in the wilderness, starting a tenuous alliance with the pair and a romance with Cima. The pair live out of sight in the woods of their one-time family ranch with a donkey and a horse. Like Hig and Bangley, they have a watch tower and built-in self-defense mechanisms but can otherwise enjoy life in their home cutaway from the rest of this dangerous society. They both carry their own losses, finding a connection with Hig in struggling to escape the everyday malaise that these experiences have created. The characters in The Dog Stars are quite thin, but there is a humanity lent to them by the performances. Elordi, in particular, is great and has a solemnity within him that really radiates out through his eyes, the weight and guilt his character feels in simply enduring make Hig into a character that pulls one’s heart strings. Josh Brolin and Guy Pearce are more rough-and-tumble, the former providing a militaristic edge to his action scenes and the latter embodying the tough cowboy in a Western taking a stand when his ranch comes under attack. Margaret Qualley’s character is the thinnest, at times turned into a figure for the male gaze to ogle at but Qualley has such charisma and grace, she makes Cima into a captivating figure. The scenes of she and Hig working to clear a meadow to help him plane take off again revel in their movie star chemistry.

It is easy to get lost in the feeling created by The Dog Stars’ melancholic ruminations on grief. But, the odd part about watching The Dog Stars is sitting with it afterwards and feeling that, as much as it covered and offered plenty of strange interludes into this post-apocalyptic world, it amounts to very little. This is a character study with miniscule characterization, leaning on the talent of its cast and the beautiful visuals to pay the balance. It is a credit to Scott that this often works, who delivers a gorgeous film with so much emotion that one immediately connects to this story. In developing its post-apocalyptic world, however, The Dog Stars is barely scratching at the surface. Some startling imagery in Denver as well as mentions and encounters with roaming hoards of violent survivors who have shed every vestige of civilization in their bloodthirsty pursuits can be captivating, but feel entirely disjointed from the overall film. The action scenes, especially one shot through night vision goggles, can be startling and exciting. A tense encounter in Grand Junction with survivors there feels surreal and otherworldly, packed full of terrifying images and feelings. And yet, there is nothing really to them in the end. The scenes come and go, carrying with them no lingering effects just a momentary thrill that dissipates. The tension never mounts, the distant hoards and close calls are so brief that they feel like slight hiccups rather than something truly arduous and lingering. The Dog Stars never picks up momentum, simply stumbling along towards its conclusion. 

The editing is a big part of the problem, often choppy and contributing to the strange feeling that The Dog Stars is both slow yet rushed. Especially towards the end, The Dog Stars basically becomes a montage, truncating a significant swatch of time into quick hitting scenes before unceremoniously ending. There is considerable emotion in these scenes and some stirring images, especially as Hig and Cima’s romance starts to take shape, as Pops and Bangley let down their guard, and their new community finds ways to lose track of the outside reality to enjoy the moment. One connects with these scenes and feelings, but they are too briefly presented. The Dog Stars is seemingly torn between two impulses, one being the need to develop a story and a world and the other to simply sit back and experience this new reality with these characters. After all, this is a film about the end and how one goes about carving out a living when everything that made up society and their world has been eradicated. The Dog Stars is stirring and moving on this front, but then has to try to jazz things up with action and science fiction that never has any of the heart or spirit that its low-key drama scenes have.

The Dog Stars is ultimately a misfire from Ridley Scott. One wants to latch onto the emotion and feeling it kicks up, that poignant look at life and loss through the lens of a world wracked by illness, violence, and disconnect. The real-life parallels are clear, while one can carry their own personal grief and loss to the table to meet these characters where they are, struggling to find motivation to see tomorrow when their entire existence seems shrouded in darkness. But, The Dog Stars is too scattered and disjointed. Its dramatic and melancholy feeling are where The Dog Stars excels and when it tries to be a more conventional action survival thriller, it lacks the same passion and intention. The scenes are flat and, in demanding time and energy, end up robbing the film of its forward momentum. The cast is great, the cinematography is excellent, and the feeling The Dog Stars cultivates is stirring, but the entire package underwhelms.