The Dog Stars Review: The End of the World, Again

The most generic post-apocalyptic plotline imaginable can be boiled down to “isolated hero leaves his fortress of solitude, sets off in search of some magical place where the old world survives, and discovers that the real civilization is the friends he made along the way.”

The Dogs Stars, director Ridley Scott’s film of the 2012 novel of the same name by Peter Heller, sticks close to that equation with one twist: Years after a plague wiped most of humanity out, mechanic and survivor Hig (Jacob Elordi, “Wuthering Heights”) has the last operable plane at his disposal. So when he heads into the abandoned city of Denver for supplies, he goes in a plane and not on horseback or a truck. Hunkered down with ex-Marine Bangley (Josh Brolin, Brolining hard), he dreams of flying away to a life with more than hunting the plentiful wildlife and mowing down the human interlopers Bangley dubs roaches.

Bar cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt’s glorious IMAX footage of Hig’s battered old Cessna soaring along rising peaks, there’s nothing memorable about The Dog Stars (plus, mountaineers and geologists will probably be furious that the Italian Dolomites are filling in for Colorado’s signature Front Range). It could be any high-budget, star-stuffed, and immediately forgettable Netflix title, the kind that racks up millions of watched minutes but no one can remember five minutes after the menu screen pops up. Elordi acts that way, too, letting his lantern jaw lead the way through the workmanlike script, relying on his natural charisma and a delivery with all the passion of a table read. It’s conceivable that the script by Mark L. Smith (Twisters, The Revenant) just calls him taciturn, but Hig is so reserved that if he didn’t have an adorable dog named Jasper and occasionally pine for his lost wife it would be almost impossible to root for him.

The script’s worst problem is that it doesn’t just adapt Heller’s book: It needlessly cannibalizes a slew of tropes from every post-apocalyptic flick from Logan’s Run to Mad Max II to I Am Legend, the whole 28 Days Later series, and, of course, The Walking Dead. It’s far bloodier and much more ridiculous than the original book, which thrived on introspection and ambiguity. Smith’s rewriting of one death in particular takes all the pathos and weight away, instead just making the scene off-putting and overly manipulative. Considering we’ve all survived a pandemic of the kind that precedes the action of Heller’s novel, and the clear isolationist subtext of Bangley’s kill-’em-all philosophy, there are plenty of ways that Smith could have updated the story to add contemporary resonance. Instead, he lets himself get burdened down with the conventions of the genre, and a haphazard edit leaves clunky subplots, like a Mennonite enclave headed up by Benedict Wong, desperately underserved. 

Possibly a subtler director might have pulled something out of this dramatic hyperbole, but Scott simply isn’t that director. It’s increasingly hard not to think about Quentin Tarantino’s controversial statements that directors should retire before they become pale imitations of themselves, but Scott – nearing 90 – is becoming living proof of his observation. There’s a long sequence with Bangley taking on roaches while wearing night vision glasses that feels like a director trying to imitate Scott’s work on Black Hawk Down, rather than actually Scott himself. He also does little to ameliorate Smith’s wafer-thin characterizations, to the point that Bangley and fellow sullen survivor Pops (Guy Pearce) could randomly swap lines and it would make little difference. Both Pearce and Brolin are playing the same kind of old grump with a gun, while Margaret Qualley is little more than a convenient and obvious love interest as Pops’ widowed daughter, Cima. Everyone’s trying, but Scott wastes their effort to end this world with too much bang and not enough whimper.

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