Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars, an adaptation of Peter Heller’s 2012 novel, is a limp and lethargic postapocalyptic drama that never finds its footing. The film, which carries a $110m budget, was released in late August after being pulled from a more encouraging date at the end of March.
A familiar survival tale
The story is set in a world where a flu pandemic has wiped out most of humanity. Mechanic Hig (Jacob Elordi) lives a simple but stressful life with his dog Jasper and grizzled former marine Bangley (Josh Brolin), protecting their remote Colorado compound and scavenging for supplies. The pair hold differing views on survival, with Hig the optimist and Bangley the opposite.
The script, from Twisters writer Mark L Smith, tends to detail these differences too loudly, as if the characters were having such conversations for the first time just for the audience’s benefit. The writing never feels convincingly lived-in, leaving investment at a minimum when chaos inevitably lands.
A late and derivative plot
Hig’s belief that something more is out there leads him to leave for a nearby hub, where he encounters a father-daughter pairing (Guy Pearce and Margaret Qualley) who join him just as so-called “reapers” – bloodthirsty goth invaders – arrive.
The action entering the fray late in the movie is not the core problem, nor is the cut-and-paste nature of the set pieces. Instead, the plot and characters are too insubstantial to justify the human-over-spectacle storytelling.
Weak performances and effects
Elordi, who was the best part of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, is on less sure footing here, delivering a boringly absent lead performance of empty, stoic stares. With a puddle-deep script that asks very little and gives even less, there is not much more anyone could have done. Smith’s dialogue is clumsy in its attempts to fill in the gaps before graduating to stiff and obvious.
A third act sequence involving Allison Janney might have seemed more sudden and shocking in Heller’s book, but it is too derivative and unscary to wake us up on screen. The scenery – rural Italy doubling for rural America – is genuinely stunning, but as in Gladiator II, there are weirdly janky visual effects, with one explosion looking laptop-made.
Scott’s disinterest in retiring is admirable, but the film suggests he seems less interested in the day job. The Dog Stars is out in Australian cinemas on 27 August and in the US and UK on 28 August.
