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Flat Perseverance is Edged Out by Bleakness in The Dog Stars


About twenty minutes into The Dog Stars, Jacob Elordi’s Hig loses his beloved German Shepherd Jasper. And the movie never recovers.
It is called The Dog Stars, based on the book by Peter Heller, and whatever reasoning for that title there actually is (the film never reveals it), one would expect the dog introduced as chief companion to the protagonist would have some major part to play. But even posthumously, Jasper isn’t particularly significant to this apocalypse story about struggling to go on and find reason to live amidst societal collapse. I’m broadly an agnostic where dogs in movies are concerned, but this one is markedly dimmer once the dog exits the picture.
Director Ridley Scott however tuckers on just like his lead, yet fails to make the point that character and those who matter to him are meant to. It’s the nearest Scott has come to making a zombie film, and it bears more than a little passing resemblance to 28 Years Later, in both its hordes of nebulously-infected dehumanized trespassers and its bleak tone of despair and solitude hanging over the emotions and actions of the survivors. But Scott doesn’t have the energy of a Danny Boyle nor the relevance of an Alex Garland -his dystopia is neither fearful nor forgiving, just mundane. It’s an intentional mundaneness, yet that doesn’t help the case of the presentation or themes.
Cashing in on lingering threads of COVID, the film is set about a decade from now in the aftermath of an incredibly devastating flu pandemic that has wiped out most of the population. Hig is a former mechanic and pilot living out of an airbase hangar in Erie, Colorado alongside an ex-military survivalist Bangley (Josh Brolin), and of course his dog. He occasionally takes a propeller plane into Denver to look for supplies and visit the home of his deceased wife and child, while Bangley guards their property from violent interlopers. After Jasper dies in an attack, a dispirited Hig leaves the compound in search of a radio signal coming from Grand Junction.
It is a very dismal quest, Hig in no uncertain terms resolving that if nothing is at Grand Junction he will consider flying his plane into the side of a mountain, with nobody left to care for and seemingly no reason to go in a hopeless future. This indicates the narrative purpose of Jasper’s premature demise -Hig needs the last thing he cares about taken from him before he can learn a new sense of purpose in time to round out his arc. But the resulting misery makes for a slog, and even Brolin isn’t charismatic enough to lighten it -cynical, pessimistic, and morally stubborn (you can see why Hig would want time away from him). Hig’s solemn brooding isn’t particularly engaging, especially the way Elordi plays it, with a similar sense of mystery and tragedy as he’s shown in something like On Swift Horses, but with none of the heart or energy. Meanwhile, Margaret Qualley, who plays Cima -a medical student surviving on a farm with her rough-around-the-edges father played by Guy Pearce (cut from so similar a cloth to Bangley they might as well be brothers)- her subtleties are likewise muted here, a shock from an often bombastic performer, that she barely comes alive either. And she fulfills the obligatory role of love interest at the end of the world quite obediently. There is something to the idea of the romance between the two, in that both are dealing with complicated feelings for one another whilst still grieving their deceased loved one -but apart from a small comment towards this theme from Cima, nothing is developed out of it. Both she and Hig remain very distant to the audience, and given the middle portion of the film is broadly focused on their quiet activity on the farm as Scott attempts to get by on mere atmosphere, it is quite easy to be bored by them.
Maybe its for this reason that Scott breaks up that dreary tranquility with an action sequence back at the hangar of Bangley fending off an army of attackers. Though you can’t help view such a scene through the lens that Hig expressed earlier of modest empathy. These are not zombies after all, but merely other people, potentially under violent effects of the flu (though this isn’t confirmed) scavenging for survival.  And Bangley has no issues taking them out mercilessly, even the more human-coded ones, lightly armed and wearing recognizable clothing (by contrast those who come in the nighttime assault are heavily tattooed, skinheads). the sequence is decently paced but a little chaotic and visually lacking as Scott appears to go for something akin to the climax of Apocalypse Now.
The other major diversion occurs when Hig does actually find a vestige of civilization, alongside Cima and her dad, and it is a very eerie and bizarre encounter, involving Allison Janney cosplaying a 1950s stewardess in an abandoned airport populated by a very miserable collective of survivors. It's a beat that serves the same function as the militia in 28 Days Later or any other zombie movie false promise of hope revealed as a dark comment on human nature. Here, it is pretty simple, though at the same time a stark contrast in tone to everything else in the movie. A solemn drama that briefly turns into 'hag' horror. And it is just as swiftly and unremarkably dealt with, its impact -necessarily sobering- registering little in Elordi’s or the other performances.
Meanwhile, an under-cooked region of the movie concerns an Amish community Hig occasionally supplies and has found a way to thrive in the apocalypse. Its children are immune to the pandemic and they overall symbolize the endurance of community and the virtue of a simpler way of life in which Hig and his friends can find hope in and aspire towards. But they are all too minimal a part of the movie to make the desired impression in this way and in fact are rather an idealized image of agrarian innocence and custom. 
From a director who has in recent years made a series of big movies -sci-fi spectacles and historical epics- I can appreciate Scott for the comparatively smaller scale of this film, far more low-key and grounded than anything he's made in years. But the mood of The Dog Stars is so entrenched and the characters so minimalist it saps the movie of life. Realistic pandemic apocalypse though it may be, it is not a compelling one. Let's hope its real-world equivalent, whenever that comes, is less dull.

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