written by: Mark L. Smith
produced by: Ridley Scott, Michael Pruss, Mark L. Smith & Cliff Roberts
directed by: Ridley Scott
rated: R (for strong violence and language)
runtime: 118 min.
U.S. release date: August 28, 2026
I try not to get up to relieve my bladder while watching a movie in a theater. This is especially true during a screening of a movie I haven’t seen before, and that hasn’t been released yet, because I don’t want to miss a thing. However, nature called about thirty minutes into “The Dog Stars”, the latest movie from Ridley Scott. As I got up and walked to the washroom, I realized that, from what I’d seen of the movie so far, any time was a good time to get up and relieve oneself. Before I got up from my reclined seat, I thought, “okay, now is a good time to go”, and that is because 1. not much had happened up until then and 2. I knew I wasn’t going to miss out on much. None of this is a good sign for the 88-year-old Scott’s late-career addition to an arguably impressive filmography that includes the likes of “Alien”, “Blade Runner”, and “Thelma and Louise”. Given his pedigree, I shouldn’t have wanted to miss a single frame of his movies, but watching “The Dog Stars” left me bored.
Ideally, this movie had the right elements to pique my curiosity. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic world after a mysterious pandemic wiped out nearly every living thing, with the few survivors somehow making it in remote areas. That sounds like something in my wheelhouse, so how come I found myself wondering if this dour dud would improve as it unfolded at a glacial pace? It definitely made me wonder if the 2012 novel of the same name by Peter Heller had more to offer. If so, how is it that screenwriter Mark L. Smith (“The Revenant” and “Twisters”) could come up with something this inert?
The story is set about nine years after a mysterious flu pandemic and blood disease has wiped out most of humanity. We meet a pilot and former mechanic named Hig (Jacob Elordi), who lives in an abandoned airport in Erie, Colorado, with his aging Australian cattle dog, Jasper, and a paranoid survivalist named Bangley (Josh Brolin). They spend their time surveilling the perimeter, with Hig patrolling from above in his yellow Cessna 182 and Bangley positioning himself in the airport’s control tower with a sniper rifle.
While the two men work together amicably, they have different views on how to deal with strangers. Hig doesn’t want to completely abandon compassion for others, often bringing scavenged supplies to a nearby Mennonite village overseen by Aaron (Benedict Wong), but he also deeply mourns the loss of his pregnant wife, Melissa (Sai Bennett), who died from the flu. He even mentions to Bangley that he has thought of flying to a beautiful mountain in Telluride that he and Melissa used to frequent – not to visit, but to schedule a one-way ticket to the side of it. Sometimes Hig flies to Denver to scavenge for food, gas, and medicine, where he also checks in on the home he used to share with Melissa, primarily to sit on the edge of their bed and sulk.
Bangley has a more proactive and cynical view of the world, and would rather kill intruders, knowing full well the kind of desperate and dangerous marauders that roam freely. He maintains a well-stocked armory and is more world-wary than world-weary, calling any outsiders “roaches.” Between the two of them, and based on what we know about post-apocalyptic environments from movies, books, television shows, and video games, it’s obvious Bangley’s approach will keep you alive longer. If these two characters are meant to critique our worldview, it falls flat because there isn’t enough characterization to go on and not enough material to connect with either man.
Determined to break free from the monotony of the life they’ve carved out for themselves, Hig decides to take flight and follow a mysterious transmission from Grand Junction, thinking there might be a larger community surviving. While in flight, his plane breaks down and Hig has to make an emergency landing in a valley. There, he encounters stampeding bison and follows a lone donkey back to a ranch inhabited by a former Navy SEAL named Pops (Guy Pearce), whose real name is Jack, and his daughter Cima (Margaret Qualley), a widow who was studying to be a doctor. Inevitably, the sad-sack Hig catches the attention of a curious Cima, much to the disdain of her skeptical father, but the pilot spends time with them while he works on repairing his plane, and trust is established.
Hig offers the father-daughter duo real coffee and cigarettes and, predictably, connects with Cima, supposedly over shared grief. Scott and Oscar-winning cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt (who’s worked on David Fincher’s “Mank” and “The Killer”) capture their meet-cute in a skeevy, voyeuristic manner, with the camera leering at Qualley in her “Daisy Dukes” and tank tops that emphasize pointy nipples (hard to miss at my IMAX screening). It’s pretty remarkable how Qualley’s Cima supposedly “grew up” in this remote valley, yet her skin, hair, and teeth are in excellent condition. Who knew post-apocalyptic living could make you look so good?
Meanwhile, back at the Erie airport, Scott tries to liven up the proceedings by having Brolin’s Bangley engage with invaders à la Call of Duty. He’s outnumbered and supposedly overwhelmed, yet holds his own. Still, Smith and Scott want us to believe that’s the end of the character, but anyone who’s seen a movie before will know better. The whole sequence injects action into the movie’s slow-burn narrative and therefore doesn’t necessarily warrant audience thrills or investment in real peril.
There is a strange, albeit somewhat welcome, tonal pivot when Hig, Cima, and Pops actually wind up landing at the Grand Junction airport, where the radio signal came from. This is where we meet Darlene (an unhinged Allison Janney), who welcomes the trio to a community that she oversees in an airport terminal that is outfitted like a 1950s retro-futurist motif with lounges and bartenders, save for her armed garrison, led by John (Sam Spruell) and Logan (James Craze). The first warning sign comes when our heroes are told they’ll have to relinquish their weapons. An understandable request in a world where no one trusts anyone, but still a warning sign. While the interaction plays out predictably, Scott does a fine job establishing an uneasy and tense situation. As viewers of shows like “The Walking Dead” or “The Last of Us” and movies such as “The Book of Eli” and “The Road” know, the real enemy in these precarious environments is other humans, not some unseen virus.
The love story between Hig and Cima, which is supposed to blossom, is unconvincing and pretty limp overall. That has less to do with the two actors portraying these characters – since Elordi and Qualley have certainly proven their talent in movies like “Frankenstein” and “The Substance”, respectively – and more to do with their lack of chemistry and laughable dialogue. It’s also hard to take them seriously when, as mentioned above, much of Qualley’s screen time here is purely eye candy, and Elordi is stuck in melodramatic stoic mode to minimal effect.
At least Smith doesn’t dump exposition filler throughout the movie. Instead, the audience gets caught up on the state of the world (in the Colorado area, at least) in the first act by a visual tour of Denver. It looks like the aftermath of an uprising: cars are overturned, and Christmas decorations are strewn across a forgotten cityscape. Remnants of hospital facilities coincide with the virus hinted at later. While we never learn the details of the virus or how quickly it spread, or how it was handled elsewhere in the States, or if it became global, that doesn’t really matter all that much here since we’ve seen so many stories like this play out that we can mentally piece it all together on our own.
It’s kind of surprising that Scott would commit to a movie that doesn’t really have anything new or different to offer, visually or otherwise, to the genre of post-apocalyptic cinema. Practically all of “The Dog Stars” was filmed in picturesque Italy, with the Dolomites substituting for the Rocky Mountains (it’s quite obvious if you know), so maybe the draw of it all was just to get a handsome cast of solid actors to Italy and have some fun. I hope they did, because I surely did not.
RATING: **
