By Mark Fields
Post-Apocalyptic Drama Well Made But Covers No New Ground
There is nothing especially bad about director Ridley Scott’s newest dramatic film, but I fully realize that is not saying much. The Dog Stars does feature a charismatic cast (Jacob Elordi, Margaret Qualley, Josh Brolin), the mountain-centric production design is convincing albeit familiar, the music appealing in its quasi-Americana vibe, and Scott’s direction is taut and focused as expected.
But, this particular genre has been pretty exhaustively explored in recent years – both in film and on TV – so if one is going to make yet another such “after the end of the world” drama, it had better offer something new or inventive or unexpected. Sadly, The Dog Stars does none of that.
Hig (Elordi) is one of an unknown number of survivors of some viral contagion (the screenplay spares us the specifics). Hig is living on what’s left of a small airfield in rural Colorado with another survivor, Bangley (Brolin), and he spends his days repairing small planes and flying to the battered husk of nearby Denver to scavenge fuel and supplies. Hig is still grieving his wife who was lost in the outbreak. After intercepting a garbled message from Grand Junction, Hig decides to abandon his friend and seek a possible community of survivors there. Along the way, he encounters Cima (Qualley) and her father (Guy Pearce) and lots of tattooed marauders called Reapers.
The story toggles between bursts of action as the survivors fend off Reaper attacks with tortured efforts to create human connection between damaged people who struggle to trust in a threatening world. Even as I type this, I hear echoes of premises of other contemplative apocalypse movies and TV shows such as I Am Legend, 12 Monkeys, The Road, The Last of Us, and Silo.
But no new ideas or twists here. Worse yet, the movie centers on the withdrawn, taciturn Hig, a character intentionally closed off from others. Consequently, he is also closed off to the audience. We get no glimpses into his internal life and struggles, and Elordi is such an opaque broody actor that we are left out and left cold. Brolin, Pearce, and Qualley bring some much-needed verve to their roles, but we have seen similar performances from all of them before.
Inexplicably, The Dog Stars is being released in IMAX, though there is nothing about this film’s look that warrants the large-screen format. And so, it remains a handsome, well-made, but superfluous rehash of other, more ground-breaking movies. If you are determined to experience a complete set of post-apocalyptic features, go ahead and see this one. But, wait to stream it from home down the road.
Official Trailer
