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# The Dog Stars Review: Ridley Scott's Apocalyptic Drama Can't Find Its Way Home
- URL: https://thefilmmaven.com/the-dog-stars-review-jacob-elordi/
- Published: 2026-08-26T00:02:58.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-26T00:02:58.000Z
- Description: Jacob Elordi can't do much more than be sad in this story of a boy and his dog.
- Author: Kristen Lopez
- Tags: Movie Reviews

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Movies have spent decades trying to show us what a world without humanity looks like. Whether fighting zombies, vampires, or just each other, the apocalypse never looks rosy but, for the most part, certainly keeps audiences on their toes. But Peter Heller's 2012 book, *The Dog Stars*, isn't the standard depiction of humanity's end. It's a moody, melancholic examination where the true fears aren't from outsized events but the isolation of being alone with people who don't understand us, wondering what's waiting for us if we keep going another ten, twenty years.

Of course, Hollywood probably doesn't see that as an exciting movie and what director Ridley Scott gives us is a movie packed with a lot of things that happen to create what should pass for tragedy and stakes. Instead, the changes to the source material make for something tonally inconsistent, ill-defined, and ultimately underwhelming. With some fascinating set pieces, decent acting, and beautiful cinematography from Erik Messerschmidt, *The Dog Stars* isn't a total loss but it's certainly underwhelming. It's a movie that doesn't feel like Scott at either his most bombastic or thought-provoking, but it's certainly one of his most basic ones. 

An influenza epidemic has destroyed nearly all of humanity. One of the few survivors is Hig (Jacob Elordi), a former mechanic who lives in a Colorado airport with his dog, Jasper, and the taciturn Bangley (Josh Brolin). But Hig is determined to find other survivors, going on a quest to follow a mysterious voice on the radio that might hold more people. 

 This isn't *The Stand* wherein we see society in the immediate aftermath of this pandemic but years after, sometime in 2035\. The requisite scenes of empty, decaying buildings are presented, with skyscrapers being reclaimed by nature. The landscape is also covered in wild dogs, seemingly a safer alternative to what men are roaming in this newfound world. Hig is the requisite sad man of these movies, struggling to cope with the loss of his wife, who shows up in beautifully composed ghostly memory passages. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/24/37/24372e80-8819-45cd-8a9d-4dbc679f7337/content/images/2026/08/the-dog-stars-3-041626-0107dd4a86154e33a8aba30d22161526.jpg)

Elordi's lanky body, perpetually hunched over, tries his hardest to not be the most gorgeous man to ever survive the apocalypse. Spending the first fifteen minutes of the movie speaking exclusively in dog commands, he has a strong camaraderie wit the animal actor playing Jasper. Seeing a movie about a man and his dog surviving the apocalypse immediately draws comparisons to Richard Matheson's *I Am Legend*, itself adapted into a movie in 2007\. And, honestly, swap the vampires for tarted up, *Braveheart*\-esque bands of feral gangs of men and you ultimately get a very similar movie. 

Screenwriter Mark L. Smith (most famously known for writing *The Revenant*...and [*Twisters*](https://thefilmmaven.com/twisters-review-glen-powell/)) tends to lean more into that rather than Heller's original text, specifically as the movie gets further and further into the middle. When Elordi and Jasper are abruptly separated about thirty minutes into the film (in a way vastly different from the book) the actor is left to interact with people and find character motivation that simply doesn't exist. Hig is sad, sad about his wife and his dog. He holds a little bit of compassion for others, chastising Bangley for killing every person who bridges their borders without even seeing if they have ammo in their weapons, and that's about it. 

Contrasting with Elordi is Josh Brolin as the brash Bangley. He's the MVP of this movie and, no doubt if this was made 20 years ago, would be the audience surrogate. Very little of Bangley's backstory is revealed, short of he was probably a doomsday prepper, one apparently with an endless supply of logo t-shirts. And yet he presents Hig with the needed spice for the audience to understand the landscape we're in. Where Hig is aimless, Bangley wants to survive. Bangley sees everyone as "roaches" while Hig thinks there are probably good people out there. And, as the movie lays out, there's probably only two good people. 

Once Hig goes off on his journey to Grand Junction, wherein he hopes the voice on the radio will offer him some type of hope, he eventually meets Cima (Margaret Qualley) and her father, Pops (Guy Pearce). Pops is a curmudgeon, similar to Bangley, while Cima is a wide-eyed former medical resident mourning a dead husband. Both actors are fine, but they're working with the bones of a character. Pearce is mired in an "old cowboy" performance he's done countless times. And poor Qualley is left to make wide eyes at Elordi. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/24/37/24372e80-8819-45cd-8a9d-4dbc679f7337/content/images/2026/08/TDS-02865.jpg.webp)

So much of the movie is reliant on action and atmosphere, one inconsistently employed and the other just bland. Harry Gregson-Williams, a composer who has crafted numerous grand, sweeping scores, decides to settle on the same plinking guitar themes throughout the majority of the score. This is complemented by a series of sad, country-inflected needle drops that sound like more depressing Noah Kahan songs. 

When the action is present it yields some of the best moments found in the movie. A sequence wherein Pops and Qualley have to defend their homestead is propulsive, though it owes its life to Old Hollywood Westerns – the gang's makeup also yields weird comparisons to cinematic portrayals of Indigenous natives – as does most of the movie's look. Similarly, an attack on the compound, with Brolin decked out in full *Apocalypse Now* camouflage, looks especially stunning on the big screen. The night vision beautifully blends with the blue night-time shadows, bodies laid against inky blackness as the countless brigands come to attack. 

But *The Dog Stars* hits its best moments right in the middle, with a wild, Twin Peaks-esque trip to the Grand Junction airport. Hig, Pops and Cima meet Darlene (Alison Janney) for what becomes a fifteen-minute sequence of creepiness and violence. As the trio runs through rooms of body parts and other house of horror features this feels like it comes from a completely different movie. It's weird to a degree the movie never hits before or after. And the whole thing collectively lasts about fifteen minutes, making us feel enthralled and simultaneously saying, "Wait, that's it?" 

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And that really is the feeling of watching *The Dog Stars*, a series of vignettes that feel stitched together. With this being a Scott movie it'd be easy to assume there's a longer, more cohesive cut of this somewhere. It has the makings of a decent miniseries but, as it stands now, everything feels very start/stop. 

None of this makes *The Dog Stars* a bad movie, just one where you'll be left saying "Huh" a lot. An inability to balance the tone, coupled with muted performance from the majority of the leads makes the runtime haphazard. The movie isn't consistently weird enough to be fun and isn't contemplative enough to be interesting. This is definitely lesser Ridley Scott.

## **Grade: C-**

*The Dog Stars is in theaters Friday.*

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