This Star-Studded Post-Apocalyptic Drama Is Dog-Awful

Fabio Lovino/20th Century Studios Four-time Oscar-nominated director Ridley Scott isn’t just one of Hollywood’s most prolific blockbuster filmmakers.

He’s the rare artist who knows how to visually paint on a big-screen canvas.

His new film, The Dog Stars, reconfirms that reputation, its story embellished with striking aerial panoramas of the misty Colorado mountains that evoke both grand beauty and loneliness.

Unfortunately, no amount of aesthetic splendor can compensate for the derivativeness of the director’s latest, a post-apocalyptic yarn that’s stitched together from the decomposing parts of its genre ancestors.

Headlined by a squandered Jacob Elordi, Margaret Qualley, Josh Brolin, and Guy Pearce, it has many stars and yet proves a mangy dog.

An adaptation of Peter Heller’s novel of the same name , The Dog Stars (August 28, in theaters) is the story of a grief-stricken loner in a virus-ravaged America who traverses decimated rural and urban landscapes while forlorn acoustic guitar cascades over the soundtrack.

In other words, it’s The Last of Us , except in this case, the man in question is Hig (Elordi) and his regular traveling companion is his loyal dog, Jasper.

The two live at an abandoned airport with Bangley (Brolin), a former Marine, and survive on supplies they collect from downtown Denver—a ravaged, sparsely populated metropolis they reach via mechanic Hig’s Cessna plane.

Working from Mark L.

Smith’s script, Scott establishes his conceit with his typical efficiency, allowing details about his characters and their situation to emerge from the action at hand.

During an expedition to the city, Hig is attacked by a crossbow-wielding bum who warns him that a group of even worse scavengers are on the horizon, and in an act of mercy that speaks to his compassion, Hig lets him live.

That empathetic ethos doesn’t extend to Bangley, a hardened military veteran who’s comfortable shooting first and asking questions later, especially when interlopers appear on the borders of their abandoned-airport home.

Elordi and Brolin are as convincing as their roles will allow early on, but from the start, The Dog Stars imagines them as cardboard cut-out versions of prior survivalist-thriller protagonists.

Whereas Bangley is resigned to their fate and convinced that staying put in their heavily fortified residence is the best way to remain alive (and something for which they should be grateful), Hig hasn’t let this big, bad, cruel world break his hopeful spirit.