‘The Dog Stars’ walks a tightwire between hope and horror
Under its roster of studio acquisitions, Disney is a wide enough tent now to include both children’s reboots (Moana, The Little Mermaid), and the foul-mouthed Deadpool & Wolverine. They even do political thrillers like Paradise, about an underground America following a global catastrophe, for its Disney+ lineup.
So it shouldn’t be too surprising that The Dog Stars (released by 20th Century Studios) is an adult, post-apocalyptic thriller set in America after a deadly pandemic. Directed by Ridley Scott, it has its share of dark, sardonic moments, but it’s leavened by humor, as well as Scott’s typically majestic cinematography and world-building.
High up in the Colorado mountains in his battered Cessna, we see Hig (Elordi) still has a shred of hope for finding survivors, despite the pain and guilt of losing his wife gnawing at him. Bangley (Brolin) thinks he’s on a suicide mission, as he mans a sniper’s tower to pick off machete-wielding Reapers. Both are on a tenuous thread, hanging on through habit. At least Hig still has his dog, Jasper.
When Hig encounters Cima (Qualley) and his hard-nosed survivalist dad (Pearce), he starts to feel buds of possibility sprout. But nothing really stays stable long in The Dog Stars.
What opens on a bucolic flyover shot of Colorado wilderness veers into several episodes that grow increasingly dark and horrific, as The Dog Stars charts a course somewhere between doomsday pessimism and a flicker of future-gazing.
Elordi and Qualley have good chemistry here—almost as much as Elordi and Brolin, who open the film on a wave of bro-vado. There’s also chemistry with Jasper, the dog (another Disney signifier) but—probably to Anne Hathaway’s horror—not even a dog’s survival is guaranteed here.
Director Scott has filmed every possible kind of genre by now, and transformed it into something special, if not iconic (the sci-fi of Alien and Blade Runner, the road trip of Thelma & Louise, the sword-and-sandal epic Gladiator, the space adventure of The Martian). He’s right at home directing a post-apocalyptic film that’s engaging and watchable (not as doomy as The Road, say). There’s a toughness to Brolin and Pearce that scores with male viewers, and Qualley has not only an open-hearted quality but the smarts to play a strong woman character with her own story in this testosterone-heavy space.
Based on Peter Heller’s 2012 novel, the script by Mark L. Smith takes the essence but changes certain things (we’ve been through an actual pandemic since then, for one thing). While The Dog Stars (the title refers to certain constellations) may conjure up The Last of Us or 28 Years Later—those Reapers are a stand-in for zombies, for sure—there’s a different dynamic here, focusing on Hig’s battle to remain committed to surviving, and their flights together looking for possible safe havens has a “Goldilocks” quality: one place is too hot, one place is too cold, one place is too crazy…
Speaking of which, the big idea of paradise for Hig is a place called Grand Junction, which he’s heard emitting encouraging radio signals. The gang decide to load up the Cessna and go for it, and it turns out “paradise” is… an old airport terminal that’s stuck in the late ‘60s. And so are the people left populating it. Proving that Ridley Scott, who directed the grand guignol hot mess that was Hannibal, still knows how to do horror in unsettling ways.
Despite dark subject matter, The Dog Stars walks the tightwire between grief and optimism, and after many perilous encounters in a world that often masks its true intentions, it lands on hope.
