After a decade of making movies that have veered between furiously angry and glibly nihilistic, it might come as something of a surprise that Ridley Scott’s new foray into the post-apocalypse genre The Dog Stars is his most humane and hopeful film since The Martian. The 88-year-old filmmaker, who has spent the last couple of years saying that he’ll die before he retires, finds a peace and freedom in the end of the world that the current order of things cannot provide him. It’s a deeply revealing sentiment that ends up being, unfortunately, the only particularly interesting thing about a survival story that is otherwise generic and uninvolving.
Adapting the novel by Peter Heller, The Dog Stars centres on Hig (Jacob Elordi), a mechanic living in the Colorado wilderness after a catastrophic flu plague ended the world. His only companions are – in order of importance – his dog Jasper, his Cessna plane, and Bangley (Josh Brolin), a former Marine who loves the clarity (and opportunities for violence) that the apocalypse has thrust upon everyone. After hearing an odd signal during a supply run to the ruins of Denver, Hig sets out in search of what sounds like the remnants of genuine civilisation, a journey derailed when his plane crashes on the farm of former trainee doctor Cima (Margaret Qualley) and her paranoiac-with-a-heart-of-gold dad Pops (Guy Pearce).
With the exception of the frequent jaunts to the open skies (which are very nicely shot by DP Erik Messerschmidt), the world of The Dog Stars will be painfully familiar to anyone who has seen The Road, The Last of Us, The Walking Dead, or the new 28 Years Later movies. There are very few original ideas here, while the apocalypse itself never actually feels all that dangerous, despite the presence of a tribe of killers called ‘The Reapers’ who aren’t zombies but might as well be. Fuel, water, medicine, and non-perishable foods are all abundant and suspiciously un-looted, even in the centre of Denver, and so the general hardscrabble thrills of basic survival that typically fuel this genre are nowhere to be seen.
This blandness is everywhere in writer Mark L Smith’s script, the dialogue functional at best and often considerably below that bar – The Dog Stars might have the most laughably personality-free Dead Flashback Wife character ever committed to screen. The cast do manage to imbue a little bit more warmth than we get on the page, though; Elordi does good stoic, Qualley (here looking more than ever like her mum Andie MacDowell) lets Cima’s faltering optimism shine through, Pearce is funny, and Brolin can do this stuff in his sleep.
Similar to Brolin, Scott is really in his comfort zone here, especially in the gunfights where he basically gets to copy his own Black Hawk Down homework (brutal headshots, night-vision shootouts, faceless hordes that need mowing down), but even they are considerably less impactful here than they were back in 2001. A couple of more surreal, mystical excursions (especially a bizarre third-act trip to a freakish community living in a disused airport) might feel tonally odd, but they do give the film a rare and welcome kick into another gear.
We won’t have Ridley Scott around for much longer – which makes his continued prolificness even more commendable – and for as long as he’s making movies, I’ll be showing up to them; there’s never *nothing* to enjoy even in his most flawed stuff. I certainly don’t regret going to see The Dog Stars, I just wish there was anything noteworthy enough here to actually remember seeing more than a few hours after the credits roll.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 