It’s 2035 and a killer flu has killed most of the population of the United States. Society has crumbled and survivors seem to have organised themselves into raiding parties or unhinged murder cults. Two men of different temperaments have taken over an Erie, Colorado airstrip as their home. Hig (Jacob Elordi) is a mechanic and light aircraft pilot who speaks more to his dog Jasper than he does to his partner Bangley (Josh Brolin). Hig values empathy as a way to live even in the most unhospitable of circumstances. Bangley prefers the aggressive survivalist mode of killing anyone who attempts to enter the airfield.
Ridley Scott took on the script by Mark L. Smith and Christopher Wilkinson adapted from the 2012 novel by Peter Heller. The reason The Dog Stars exists is that it was a convenient project to make up for his ill-fated Bee Gees biopic. Scott seems to be going through the motions with The Dog Stars by not greatly concerning himself with pacing (the first act is tediously long), not particularly interested in adding to the whisper-thin characterisation and only seems to come alive during scenes of violent interactions with “Reapers” and “Hunters.”
Jacob Elordi tries to inhabit a character who has approximately three distinctive qualities. Hig is still grieving the death of his wife Melissa and their unborn child (Sai Bennett) and finds it difficult to stop visiting their home and imagining her when heavily pregnant. Hig is extremely handy as a former mechanic and part-time construction worker. Hig is also hopeful that there are other survivors who have managed to create some form of functioning collective. He’s basically a “nice guy” who delivers supplies to a Mennonite community where the children are unable to survive basic illness. He flies his Cessna 182 to collect petrol, medication, food, beer, and soda alighting in Denver. The design of Denver is confusing in its hodgepodge visuals of a dead city. Digital billboards are still working but there are buildings reclaimed by nature and man made destruction.
Hig’s other job is to provide air surveillance to spot any potential threats. His constant companion is Jasper a Belgian Malinois of advanced age and absolute devotion to Hig. When Hig doesn’t pay attention to threats he could have seen if he weren’t so taken with hearing a sporadic radio callout from the airport in Grand Junction, Colorado. To teach Hig a lesson about not living in the reality they share, Bangley allows some scavengers to attack so Hig can learn to clean up his own messes. Jasper defends Hig and is killed. Hig buries Jasper in his ex-home’s garden and decides that he needs to go search for something less bleak and brutal, leaving Bangley alone at the compound.
Engine trouble leads Hig to make an emergency landing which is complicated further as a herd of bison thunder past him damaging the already fragile Cessna. Hig has landed on the property of rancher Pops (Guy Pearce) and his daughter Cima (Margaret Qualley). Over time Pops comes to trust the young man and Cima comes to feel a deep form of companionship with him wherein they can speak about how much they miss their respective deceased spouses and discuss the everyday pre-virus life things that they miss. Cima was a medical resident with her husband in New York until she came back to the ranch to care for her mother with late-stage cancer. Quarantines struck and she was never able to see Tom again. In the following years she’s been living with Pops on their farm away from anyone except the occasional scavenger.
The script has the habit of putting a hat on a hat. Jasper wasn’t simply beloved because he was a good and loyal companion. A flashback scene after he is dead shows Hig bringing the puppy home to Melissa, “Jasper, that’s your mom.” The same goes for why he can’t let go of Melissa and consider a proper relationship with Cima. “I killed my wife,” he chokes. Of course, he didn’t kill Melissa, he just gave her a more peaceful death. One would expect that a pandemic that killed most of the population is enough to garner sympathy for Hig and his situation, but the writing assumes the audience hasn’t picked up on the tragedy of it all and the notion of survivor’s guilt so it adds surplus servings of “sad things” to go with Hig’s perpetually sad man posture. “Life was good before,” is not a necessary statement in a post-apocalyptic milieu.
The movie comes to life when it embraces the (mostly) expected action. Pops (whose name is Jack) and Cima’s farm is attacked by hunters (costumed as Braveheart meets Mad Max meets some form of Native American Apache cosplay) and they trio are forced to get the Cessna off the ground while the hunters throw themselves at the plane to murder them. Meanwhile, Bangley is having his own troubles with the marauding and numerous tattooed monstrous Reapers who attack the compound. Scott is a solid action director, and even if he weren’t it’s a relief when the telegraphed something finally happens.
Lightly touched on is the idea of what America should be, and the message ends up quite muddied. It’s somewhere between collective co-operation between the peaceful (the religious) and the practical (the ex-marine, the mechanic). There’s a distinctly tonally deranged section involving Grand Junction run by Darlene (Allison Janney) that seems like it could be somewhere Hig, Jack, and Cima could stay until the closeup on Sam Spruell’s face as he plays one of Darlene’s army suggests otherwise.
The cinematography by Erik Messerschmidt is generally gorgeous as Hig flies over “Colorado” but anyone hoping to see iconic shots of the Rocky Mountains should be pre-warned that Scott filmed in Italy in various regions of the Apennines. The production design is also quite good, especially in the Grand Junction section (but questionable in the Denver section). I also have to thank the person who leaves an obviously unread copy of David Foster Wallace’s The Infinite Jest in Bangley’s shed. Even when there’s all the time in the world it appears no-one seems to get around to Infinite Jest.
The Dog Stars issues mostly are script related and that it lacks its own personality. There are numerous films and especially video games where scenes and ideas seem picked up from because it’s overly familiar in too many aspects. Want a touch of The Last of Us and a smattering of 28 Days Later with random dystopian tropes dished up in piles of unsorted mush? The answer is probably no; but if you’re willing to sit through things you’ve seen before and better because you really like the genre tropes then The Dog Stars might just scratch some itch.
However, to get to the survival movie and action film beats you are required to endure “emotion” delivered in dreary, and often forced, abundance. The film’s title? Hig likes to look up at the bright stars (light and actual pollution no longer being a problem) with Jasper and then Cima and rename the constellations with names that mean something to him. The sky is beautiful, the sky is full of hope, the sky is peace… and so on (and on and on).
There is pitifully little to recommend The Dog Stars with the performances being on average fine but never particularly impressive. Josh Brolin seems to have fallen into a “type” that’s not pushing his limits. Guy Pearce has done this kind of role for The Rover but is at a more sedate pace. Elordi and Qualley don’t have chemistry, instead they have plot inevitability.
Ridley Scott’s sloppiness is getting tiresome as he is a director who is thoroughly capable of making a great film, but more often than not in his later career it’s a rare occurrence. The Dog Stars does nothing to prove that Scott still has the juice to make something that matters enough to be more than a direct to streaming filler with tentpole aspirations.
Director: Ridley Scott
Screenplay: Mark L. Smith and Christopher Wilkinson based on the novel by Peter Heller
Cast: Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley, Guy Pearce, Benedict Wong, Allison Janney
Cinematography: Erik Messerschmidt