At the ripe old age of 88, Ridley Scott has a whopping 30 features to his name. Among them are some of the best films across disparate genres: Alien in horror, Blade Runner in sci-fi, American Gangster in crime, Gladiator in ancient war, Thelma & Louise in dramedy, and Black Hawk Down in modern war. But he’d never taken on post-apocalyptic existence—until now.
The Dog Stars—an adaptation of Peter Heller’s hit novel of the same name—follows Hig, aka “Big Hig” (Jacob Elordi), a thirty-something everyman mechanic who lost his pregnant wife to the flu virus that wiped out most of the world. He lives alongside his dog, Jasper, in an airport hangar outside of Denver. His only companion is Bangley (Josh Brolin), another survivor who, unlike Hig, is content with the quaint, gray, quiet life they lead (which doesn’t look terribly different from some rural American living situations today). To Bangley, protecting property is paramount and the very concept of new faces invites trouble. Hig, however, is willing to brave that dark; the risk of unknown danger weighs less to him than the potential benefit of discovering a community. And he has a lead.
So, with more fuel than he’s ever carried, he jets off toward Grand Junction to chase a wayward signal he occasionally catches while flying into Denver for supplies. He believes it might be a call from a community that has built something better, something more alive and collective—an existence that doesn’t merely hinge on self-defense. When he is forced to land his plane before reaching his destination, he encounters Cima (Margaret Qualley) and Pops (Guy Pearce). This father and daughter live a life very similar to Hig and Bangley’s, and their dispositions mirror each other’s, too.
Pops, ridden with anxiety at the arrival of an outsider, wants no newcomers. Cima, on the other hand, is visibly stirred by the sudden arrival of a man her age and is willing to extend her trust almost immediately. Will Big Hig be able to fix his plane to continue his search for Grand Junction? Does he even want to after meeting Cima? If he stayed, where would that leave Bangley? And would Pops ever get on board? Those questions hang in the balance as Bangley, on his own, and the other three, together, fend off the invading “new tribe” that seems to be taking over everything in its path.
The decision to cast Indigenous people as the “new tribe” threatening the main characters’ existence was clearly made to accentuate the Wild West allegory of the film. But it’s a questionable decision at best, if not a terrible one, given the tribe’s depiction as mindless, bloodthirsty savages. It is an ugly Native American trope so commonly employed by white creators in tales of the American West that it’s simply stupefying to see it represented onscreen in 2026 as a surface-level metaphor—as if that characterization hasn’t been historically debunked, and as if history is still only written by the winners.
For all the narrative and creative concepts Scott has gotten right (or invented) across his career, the one thing he consistently botches is sentimentality. Take, for instance, Legend, whose fairytale romance floundered in the hands of the hardened British firebrand. Sappy sentimentalism is, perhaps, The Dog Stars’ greatest creative crime. Folksy, downbeat needle-drops of Caamp’s anthem “By and By” (yes, there is more than one) land with the tact of a faux-emotional Hallmark movie.
The score follows suit, filling the blanks between songs in a similarly schmaltzy register. The burgeoning romance between Hig and Cima is “five drinks too deep” on tender glances and suppressed emotion. The “maybe people aren’t so bad” revelations that creep up on Bangley and Pops are handled with the finesse of an infomercial. Even the product placement is unsubtle, with certain sequences coming across as little more than ads for Coke, Sprite, and Taco Bell.
Hig and Bangley are an overt microcosm of the American political spectrum. It’s so on-the-nose that it can be difficult to keep your eyes from rolling. Their characters hardly amount to more than a bulleted list of what divides the country. Bangley is an older, cynical, gun-toting, property-obsessed “country boy” who refers to outsiders as “roaches” and finds showing goodwill to others foolish. In other words, he loves fences.
Hig is a younger, essentially socialist pacifist who finds hope in exploring beyond his reach. He’s the one who goes into the city when someone needs to; he’s the one with the dog; he’s the one who delivers supplies to a local Mennonite community at the risk of contracting disease. Hig has less life experience, which means he’s been burnt less, leaving him with an appetite to live broadly where Bangley has none.
The movie leans toward Hig’s perspective, but it neither touts nor villainizes either man. It wants to understand both. As a result, their friendship is displayed in a way that suggests the filmmakers really want us to witness the two living in relative harmony. It’s a lovely idea, but it’s handled so tastelessly that it comes across as pandering to both sides and everyone in between.
Scott’s last three films have largely been moot points, despite significant star power and pop-culture anticipation, signaling a decline in the late stage of his career. Unfortunately, The Dog Stars follows that trend. That said, Scott has never fallen prey to a string of lesser films for long; he always bounces back. With several more features on his horizon and no signs of slowing down, one can only hope he’ll come out of the gates swinging for film #31.
The Dog Stars opens in theaters on Friday, August 28.
The post The Dog Stars Review: Ridley Scott Strikes Out With Post-Apocalyptic Dud first appeared on The Film Stage.
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