‘The Dog Stars’: A Post-Apocalyptic Film That Loses Its Way

How many ways can the world end? A virus wipes out humanity. Cities fall silent. Survivors retreat into fortified corners of civilisation, scavenging what they can and keeping one eye trained on whoever might be lurking beyond the fence. We’ve seen the apocalypse take many forms over the years, so when The Dog Stars arrives with another vision of humanity’s last days, the question isn’t whether the world has ended. It’s whether the film has, if anything, new to say about what comes after.

Based on Peter Heller’s well-received novel of the same name, the film follows Hig (Jacob Elordi), a former pilot who lives in the Colorado wilderness with his dog, Jasper, and survivalist neighbour Bangley (Josh Brolin). Their days revolve around patrols in Hig’s Cessna, carefully rationed supplies and the occasional encounter with the remnants of the world they once knew. When whispers of a safe haven called Grand Junction reach him, Hig ventures beyond the confines of his isolated existence in search of something more.

With promising source material, an accomplished cast, and a director with an impressive filmography behind him, The Dog Stars has all the makings of a memorable addition to the genre. Instead, much of that promise gets lost along the way.

At times, The Dog Stars feels less like a conventional dystopian thriller and more like a Western. Hig is a lone figure on the frontier, surveying vast stretches of wilderness before returning to the small pocket of civilisation he has carved out for himself. Its sweeping skies and desolate landscapes make the apocalypse look almost peaceful, and it is in these moments that the film feels most assured. Through the contrast between isolation and companionship, it finds a warmth that is surprisingly rare in the genre. Beneath the guns and ruins is a story about community, and the kind of people we choose to become when the structures that once held us together have fallen away.

That idea takes on a darker shape as other groups of survivors emerge. The Reapers, who pose a chilling threat to those around them, represent one possible outcome of a world where brutality becomes the only rule. Hig, meanwhile, clings to his morality, suggesting that there is still a right way to survive even when everything around him has gone wrong. It’s an interesting idea, and perhaps the film’s most compelling one, but The Dog Stars never explores it with enough depth.

Its pacing does little to help. There is a deliberate slowness to Hig’s existence, but the film occasionally mistakes repetition for rhythm. We understand his isolation long before the Cessna makes yet another trip across the Colorado sky, and the story struggles to build enough momentum around his journey.

The worldbuilding presents a similar problem. Perhaps the filmmakers recognise that audiences no longer need another detailed explanation of how a pandemic brought civilisation to its knees. We know the shorthand by now, and there’s something refreshing about leaving parts of that history unexplained, but mystery only works when what is withheld creates intrigue. Here, it too often leaves a vacuum. By the time the credits roll, we know surprisingly little about the world Hig inhabits, the people who survived it or the forces that shaped him. The film doesn’t need to answer every question, but it should leave us with more compelling ones.

The performances fare better. Elordi is suitably reserved as Hig, though the character feels less layered than some of his previous roles, making him seem rather muted by comparison. Meanwhile, Brolin, Margaret Qualley, and Guy Pearce make the most of their material, particularly in the relationships they build with one another and Hig, but even strong performances can only go so far when the script leaves its ideas underdeveloped. 

For all its shortcomings, The Dog Stars offers a surprisingly gentle vision of the apocalypse. You’ll walk out of the cinema believing that connection still matters, especially when there’s so little left to ground us, but a good idea can only carry a film so far. While the film occasionally captures the beauty and emotional depth that made Heller’s novel so well-regarded, it never quite makes those qualities feel fully its own. The Dog Stars simply needed to give us something to hold on to. It almost does, and that might be the most frustrating thing of all.

Rating: 6/10

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