The Dog Stars Is a Western in Postapocalyptic Drag
Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars is a postapocalyptic thriller without thrills, resting on the shoulders of a mopey Jacob Elordi, who’s far from up to the task. What the film does have is a frontier fantasy it can’t stop indulging.
Jacob Elordi should never again play a depressed man wandering around lost in his own inner turmoil. Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars is all the proof you need. (20th Century Studios / Scott Free Productions)
The dullest yet most enraging film of the year may very well be The Dog Stars, a draggy postapocalyptic thriller with no thrills, even of the grim dystopian kind.
This latest effort by director Ridley Scott, from a screenplay by Mark L. Smith (Twisters, The Revenant) based on the 2012 novel of the same name by Peter Heller, is about the survivors of a flu pandemic who live in isolated enclaves defending their turf from marauding bands of desperate nomads.
Jacob Elordi plays Hig, an ex-mechanic turned prop pilot whose last remaining relationship from the old days is with his dog, Jasper. Jasper is a cool dog, a Belgian Malinois, who keeps whining nervously as if he knows he’s not safe with Hig. They fly around Colorado in Hig’s little putt-putting plane, fetching supplies for Hig’s enclave and the nearby hilltop group of Mennonites led by the fatherly Aaron (Benedict Wong). Then it’s back home to the fort-like settlement with tough ex-Marine survivalist Bangley (Josh Brolin) as Hig’s only human company.
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