The Dog Stars

Sweeping mountain vistas contrast with nearby urban decay and provide The Dog Stars with some of its most striking images. But unfortunately, the storytelling never quite rises to the same heights.

Ridley Scott’s post-apocalyptic thriller highlights intriguing ideas about grief, companionship, and the need to believe that life can continue. However, it rarely finds a fresh way to express them.

After a devastating flu pandemic wipes out most of humanity, pilot and former mechanic Hig (Jacob Elordi) lives in an abandoned Colorado airplane hangar with his dog and Bangley (Josh Brolin), a volatile ex-Marine who treats survival as a military operation.

Hig spends his days flying a battered Cessna over the ruins of Denver, searching for supplies and scanning the radio for signs of life. The routine keeps him alive, yet it also leaves him emotionally drained.

A mysterious transmission changes that. Convinced it may lead to other survivors, Hig ventures beyond the relatively secure territory he shares with Bangley. His search eventually brings him to Cima (Margaret Qualley) and her fiercely protective father (Guy Pearce), whose quieter community offers a sharp alternative to Bangley’s paranoid worldview.

The setup is promising, but the film rarely exploits the tension between these two ways of surviving. Violent encounters with scavengers deliver occasional bursts of brutality, though they feel more like interruptions than escalating threats.

Elordi gives Hig an appealing mixture of decency and restlessness, while Brolin makes Bangley’s aggression surprisingly funny at times without softening his menace. Hig’s desire for something beyond mere survival is compelling. The film is less convincing when it tries to leverage those ambitions into something more profound.

The screenplay by Mark Smith (Twisters), adapted from Peter Heller’s novel, keeps opening doors without deciding which ones are worth walking through. However, there are flashes of something more affecting beneath the survivalist machinery.

Tragedy hangs over Hig’s every decision, and his attachment to his dog gives his otherwise solitary existence an uncomplicated emotional anchor. But the film repeatedly pulls away from those quieter details in favor of plot mechanics, making its emotional impact feel intermittent rather than cumulative.

Best when it simply observes people trying to remain human after the world has stopped rewarding them for it, The Dog Stars finds moments of genuine feeling in the wreckage, yet lacks the bite to match its bark.

Rated R, 118 minutes.