The Dog Stars

Rated R • Theaters

Director Ridley Scott might be most known for his science-fiction thrillers and historical adventures, but at the age of 88, he’s tackling the postapocalyptic genre with The Dog Stars, a film based on the 2012 novel of the same name.

The year is 2035, and civilization has fallen after most of the world’s human population died from a virus. Hig (Jacob Elordi) and Bangley (Josh Brolin) live in Colorado on a secluded compound that has a runway for Hig’s vintage Cessna. On one of his occasional flights to Denver to collect abandoned supplies, he picks up a radio signal from the town of Grand Junction farther West. He thinks it’s worth investigating whether some form of civilization has survived there. Bangley disagrees. Hig starts heading toward Grand Junction, and on his way he joins up with a woman his own age (Margaret Qualley) and her father (Guy Pearce). Will Hig and his friends find what they’re looking for in this lonely world?

In this film, the remnants of humanity fall into two groups: those who wish to cooperate for mutual support and those who wish to exploit others to survive. The plot is propelled by Hig’s desire to find the former, and it’s complicated by Bangley’s reluctance to admit the former exist. Of course, Bangley has good reasons for his attitude. Most of the people we meet in this movie are agents of moral chaos selfishly perpetuating civilization’s destruction.

Postapocalyptic stories resonate with our fears of what might lie in store for the human race, but they also reflect our intuitive understanding that this world we live in is broken. It might not be quite as broken as the depopulated world of The Dog Stars, but it’s certainly not the harmonious creation it was intended to be.

As Hig’s Cessna swoops through the sky, Scott crafts some stunning images of lonely landscapes—how can you go wrong visually when the forests and mountains of Colorado serve as your backdrop? And this cinematic study of our human condition has its moments of pathos, but the film lacks focus. Hig’s travels give the film an episodic structure in which scenes only loosely inform one another. And in the third act, the tone shifts jarringly from its emphasis on lonely survival to something much more creepy.

Moreover, the script fails to depict the realities of evil in a convincing manner. The ravaging marauders whom Bangley fears are presented as subhuman beasts, wild and mute without the kind of cunning that would make a band of desperate survivalists so dangerous. And the more civilized bad guys in this movie end up being Bible-quoting caricatures of wickedness.

The Dog Stars is rated R for language and strong violence.