Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars, based on Peter Heller’s novel, is a post-apocalyptic survival film caught between two different movies. On one hand, it is a slow, contemplative story about grief, loneliness, and the possibility of finding something worth living for after the end of the world. On the other, its marketing suggests a more conventional action thriller, filled with guns, shootouts, and Jacob Elordi stalking through a desolate landscape. The movie itself remains much more faithful to the quieter nature of its source material than that marketing might suggest. But that faithfulness also means The Dog Stars can feel slow and, eventually, rather dull.
The film opens with a setup that will remind some viewers of I Am Legend. A virus has wiped out most of humanity, society has collapsed, and Hig (Jacob Elordi) lives in isolation with his dog. The world around him is barren and bleak, captured through a deliberately muted color palette that emphasizes just how little life remains. Hig spends his days trying to survive while also holding onto the belief that there might still be something out there beyond the small world he has created for himself.
He spends time with Bangley (Josh Brolin), a former Marine who is much more comfortable with the brutal reality of their situation. Bangley protects their home from raiders with a sniper and has essentially accepted that survival means being prepared to kill anyone who threatens them. Hig, meanwhile, cannot quite accept that this is all life has left to offer.
Brolin is easily the best part of the film. He is perfectly cast as Bangley, bringing a natural toughness to the character without making him feel like a generic post-apocalyptic badass. There is a lived-in quality to his performance that makes Bangley feel like someone who has been surviving this way for years. Elordi, meanwhile, gets to play against the type of roles audiences may increasingly associate him with. Rather than another villain or arrogant antagonist, he is sympathetic and vulnerable here, playing a man who lost his pregnant wife during the apocalypse.
Unfortunately, Hig’s wife is primarily seen through flashbacks, and she barely gets an identity beyond being the person Hig lost. She is there to explain why he is grieving, why he feels broken, and why he is desperate to believe there is something more to the world. But because we don’t really get to know her as a person, her death never carries the emotional weight the movie wants it to.
This becomes a problem, because The Dog Stars relies heavily on its characters’ pasts to create emotional depth. Hig and Cima (Margaret Qualley) are both grieving people who have experienced tremendous loss. Cima’s father, Pops (Guy Pearce), is understandably suspicious of Hig when they meet, while Cima is more willing to trust him. Eventually, they begin to form a bond.
The problem is that there isn’t much specificity to these relationships. We know these characters have suffered, but simply knowing that someone has experienced tragedy does not automatically make their relationships compelling. Hig and Cima feel like two sad people who find each other in a sad world, rather than two fully developed characters whose personalities and differences create an interesting dynamic. Their connection is understandable, but it never becomes particularly fascinating.
This is also where the movie’s pacing becomes an issue. It takes quite a while to get moving, and even when things pick up, the dramatic stakes never compel. The movie isn’t necessarily boring during its quieter stretches, but it often isn’t very interesting either. There is a thin line between contemplative and stagnant, and The Dog Stars sometimes crosses to the wrong side of that line.
The film becomes considerably more entertaining when it finally embraces the action movie that its marketing promised. About an hour and 15 minutes in, the movie launches into a few action sequences that last roughly 30 minutes. This is the section where Ridley Scott really gets to cut loose. Hig is forced into increasingly dangerous situations, and the film finally gives us the shootouts, ambushes, fights, and images of Elordi wielding a gun that audiences were probably expecting from the trailers.
This is easily the most entertaining stretch of the movie. Scott is still Scott, after all, and there is a confidence to the staging of the action that the quieter sections sometimes lack. The characters are attacked by hordes of largely faceless villains, and while these antagonists aren’t particularly memorable, the action itself has an energy that makes the movie suddenly feel alive. The problem is that even this sequence doesn’t completely solve the film’s underlying dramatic issues. The action is exciting in the moment, but there isn’t enough character conflict or emotional complexity underneath it to make the danger feel particularly consequential. We understand that these people are trying to survive, but the movie never makes us care as deeply about their survival as it clearly wants us to, and the antagonists don’t become anything beyond target practice.
Then, near the end, Allison Janney enters the picture. This is when the picture feels like it has wandered into an entirely different story. Her section has a different energy and tone, and even Janney’s performance feels as though it belongs to another movie. It is a strange tonal shift in a film that already struggles to establish a consistent identity.
There is nothing outright terrible about The Dog Stars. The filmmaking is competent, Scott knows how to stage action, the performances are generally solid, and Brolin gives the movie a much-needed jolt of personality whenever he is on screen. But there also isn’t enough here to recommend it enthusiastically. The biggest problem is that The Dog Stars wants to be deeply emotional without giving its characters enough specificity to earn those emotions. It wants to be contemplative without always having enough interesting material to contemplate, and it wants to be an action movie without providing enough dramatic momentum to make its action feel meaningful.
Ultimately, The Dog Stars is a perfectly competent post-apocalyptic survival movie that never becomes much more than that. It has the ingredients for something memorable—Ridley Scott, a compelling source novel, a talented cast, and a fascinating premise—but they never quite come together. Josh Brolin is the standout, and the extended action sequence proves that there is a much more entertaining version of this movie hiding somewhere inside it. Unfortunately, most of The Dog Stars is too slow, too one-note, and too familiar to leave much of an impression.
SCORE: 5/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 5 equates to “Mediocre.” The positives and negatives wind up negating each other, making it a wash.
Disclosure: ComingSoon attended a press screening for our The Dog Stars review.
