“The Dog Stars” Review

With “The Dog Stars,” director Ridley Scott continues his unfortunate late-career run of mediocrity, delivering a dime-a-dozen apocalypse survival story with charisma vacuums in the lead roles, even as Josh Brolin does his best to add gravitas and emotional nuance to the clichéd story of a boring sad sack looking for love at the end of the world.

The year is 2035. Civilization has collapsed after an unprecedented influenza epidemic wiped out the bulk of the population, leaving the survivors to create and search for new communities. Hig (Jacob Elordi) spends his days with a gruff survivalist named Bangley (Josh Brolin) and his trusty dog Jasper.

When he’s not at camp, fending off other survivors, called roaches, who threaten their safety and livelihood, Hig takes to the sky in his beat-up Cessna to search for supplies and any other signs of humanity. Despite how many attacks he and Bangley weather from feral bands of bloodthirsty survivors called reapers, Hig refuses to buy into Bangley’s pessimistic belief that everybody is out to get everybody else in this new world and that Hig will never find anything like the comfort of home in the past.

During one trip in search of a possible bastion of civilization in Grand Junction, Colorado, Hig is forced to land and meets the father daughter duo of Pops and Cima (Guy Pearce and Margaret Qualley), living on their own and offering a counter to Bangley’s defeatism, giving Hig the idea that there may be more than one way to survive.

A post-apocalyptic story following desperate survivors in search of a rumored utopia is a story told again and again, in films as diverse as the zombie comedy “Zombieland” and the bleak and poignant “The Road.” To rehash such hackneyed material, a movie needs either distinct and memorable characters or a unique vision for the end of the world to set itself apart but “The Dog Stars,” sadly, possesses neither.

While Ridley Scott provides a steady hand in direction, he unfortunately does nothing to elevate the trite story, resulting in a monotonous, bland echo of the same apocalyptic survival story told a million times before.

The pacing is all over the place, with the quiet moments going on forever and the action set pieces rushed through far too quickly. Many of these adventure sequences would be better served with some patience, some attention to building atmosphere, and yet Scott seems eager to move on as soon as possible to the next opportunity for montages of wonderful mountainous vistas set to the music of Hozier.

As the film’s central couple, Jacob Elordi and Margaret Qualley offer up dull performances of shallow characters whose only emotions range from sad to more sad. Their wooden acting is made all the more glaring whenever Guy Pearce or Josh Brolin are on screen, blowing the young performers away with their casual command of their characters.

Brolin is particularly moving as Bangley, a loner who seems to relish his position in this new world order, finally able to apply his well developed skillset and further isolate himself from human connection, yet Brolin adds emotional nuance to this stoic warrior, time and again hinting at a deeper, more traumatic interior life without ever overdoing it.

In the end, “The Dog Stars” is a competent but forgettable take on the end of the world, offering very little to differentiate itself from countless other such movies over the years.

The Dog Stars
Rated R for strong violence and language.
Running Time: 1 hour and 58 minutes.

Director Ridley Scott
Writers Mark L. Smith
Stars Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley, Guy Pearce
Rating R
Running Time 118 Minutes
Genres Action, Adventure, Drama