The Dog Stars preview screening provided by Disney.
From first glance, The Dog Stars (2026) has the makings of a Ridley Scott film with its post-apocalytic setting giving the veteran director an opportunity to build suspense in the unknown, but it feels like anything but a Ridley Scott film.
Having been adapted for the screen by Mark L. Smith from Peter Heller’s 2012 novel of the same name, the film calls to mind the recent hit show The Last of Us (2023 – ), opting for the same sort of lived-in yet barren wasteland as the backdrop to events. Mankind has experienced a plague of some kind that has taken the lives of the majority and left others scraping by, defending the little they can gather while scavengers work to steal it. Jacob Elordi plays a mechanic who lives out on a big block of land with a rugged Josh Brolin and a dog, Jasper.
The film almost carries a tranquil quality with sweeping vistas, shots of a plane flying over said vistas and just a serenity that makes you wonder how it’ll be disrupted. There’s a whole lofty backstory built around Elordi’s character that informs his attachment to his dog, with flashbacks cutting from the past to the present showing these interactions with his wife. At some point though, the plot needs to move forward and what better way to get it moving than by having a scuffle with those aforementioned scavengers which sees his dog be killed. (John Wick vibes, anyone?). This leads to Hig (Elordi’s character) making the decision to head out with his plane to the “Grand Junction” in search of a mystery voice he’s been picking up while surveying the land from the sky.
There’s a sloppiness to the writing to get the plot to this point, and just a randomness to proceedings which doesn’t stop here. Hig ventures out where he crash lands and meets the duo of “pop” (a Guy Pearce who the audience I was with said looked like Brolin) and a young former medical student Cima (Margaret Qualley). Here, the film splits into two: you have Brolin’s character facing a wrath of skinhead-like scavengers who look like they’ve been pulled from Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), and Elordi and co getting acquainted.
The latter side sees a wonky, unconvincing love subplot be thrown in between Elordi and Qualley’s characters that is incredibly underwritten and isn’t helped by the actors having zero chemistry with each other. Elordi’s performance also feels incredibly stale —no doubt due to the terrible writing— and probably wasn’t helped by him being cast on account of Paul Mescal dropping out of the film (there’ll be no Oscar nomination this time like when Elordi was recast in the Frankenstein’s monster role).
It’s as though there was a desire to have a more contemplative approach to a novel with writing that no doubt reads that way, but the need to add action and energy was playing on people’s minds so some of it was thrown in for good measure. Beyond that, there just isn’t the punchiness of a Ridley film; the stakes feel watered down, the set pieces are quite blasé and this just plays like a very ‘autopilot’ project from a director we know can do so much more.
The Dog Stars opens nationally from 27 August 2026.
Rating Frames 