The Dog Stars

by Mike McGranaghan

Ridley Scott is one of our finest directors. Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, and The Martian are among his greatest works. (Some people love Gladiator, but I am not among them.) Because of his pedigree, it’s absolutely baffling that he didn’t see the substantial problem plaguing his latest film, The Dog Stars, based on Peter Heller’s novel. Did he not watch the movie after he was done cutting it, or did he get so lost in his vision that he didn’t realize how awkwardly it plays?

The story takes place after a virus has wiped out most of humanity. Among the few survivors are former mechanic Hig (Jacob Elordi), a widower mourning his late wife. He lives in a remote compound with survivalist friend Bangley (Josh Brolin). They’ve spent a long time defending their property from other “roaches,” although Hig wonders what else is left of the world. He flies a Cessna around the mountains of Colorado, eventually encountering two other survivors, Cima (Margaret Qualley) and her father Pops (Guy Pearce). When invaders attack their compound, he launches an aerial escape.

We’ve seen a lot of movies where society has been largely eradicated by a pandemic of some sort. One or two of them come out every year. For a while, The Dog Stars is different. Working from a screenplay by Mark L. Smith, Scott zeroes in on the grimness of the situation. You can feel the desperate lives Hig and Bangley lead. The isolation, the constant need for surveillance, and the pain of losing loved ones is palpable. Cima’s desire for companionship can also be felt. She’s tired of being alone, making the arrival of Hig seem like a glimmer of hope in this dark world.

The story has an overall sadness that’s affecting, especially given that the main quartet of actors do very fine work. Together, they capture the shared survivor’s guilt of their characters. Striking cinematography showing the Cessna soaring though the mountains and landing on dilapidated city streets drives home the contrast between the beautiful world that was and the ruined one that has taken its place. I found myself growing melancholic watching the film because it makes the scenario more real than we typically see it presented.

Then the last half-hour arrives and the picture goes off the rails. Hig, Cima, and Pops land at an airport in Grand Junction, sending the plot in a jarringly surreal direction. Allison Janney shows up playing a cliché of a 1960s stewardess, and it’s like she wandered in from a Will Ferrell comedy. (I never thought I’d say this, but Janney’s presence makes this movie worse.) Heightened design of the airport contrasts badly with the authentic look of everything else, as does the exaggerated manner of the airport’s denizens. All of a sudden, Hig and company are ripped out of stark reality and plunged into a bizarre Twilight Zone-esque fantasy.

I’m sure Scott had a reason for staging this section in such a bizarre manner. Regardless, it doesn’t work, as it slows the actual drama down to a halt. The sequence is simply too weird to buy into. Distractingly weird, in fact. Spending a large chunk of time on Grand Junction requires the ending to be rushed, which robs the finale of the emotional impact that the first hour-and-a-half had been carefully building up to.

The first three-quarters of The Dog Stars are thoroughly engrossing. That last quarter, however, is fundamentally misjudged, to the point where it undermines the hard work Elordi, Qualley, Brolin, and Pearce have put into their performances. What an anticlimactic bummer.