[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for The Dog Stars.]
It’s not every day you see a film that immediately seems weary of its own bullshit, but The Dog Stars is stripped to the studs from the first frame. Higs (Jacob Elordi), Bangley (Josh Brolin), and their canine pal Jasper have been eking out life in the post-apocalypse for some time before we meet them, and they’ve got a nice thing going at the tiny remote airport where they’ve set up shop. There’s ample food, shelter, guns, and a beat-up Cessna available to fly out and get more when needed. Higs and Bangley have solved most of the major problems that face characters in stories like this, but there is disquiet, because the pair of men have spent all their time in conflict, and that conflict is The Dog Stars‘ most compelling, and woefully underdeveloped, idea: the “post-apocalypse story,” as we’ve come to understand the standard for the genre, is exhausting, and perhaps it should change.
The film presents this argument by having these two men embody opposing philosophies, in a way not terribly dissimilar (and about as blunt) as Lost‘s man-of-science, man-of-faith dyad of Jack Shephard and John Locke. In The Dog Stars, Bangley represents the lessons of the typical post-apocalypse story; he’s studied the cruel math of survival as taught by The Road, The Walking Dead, and The Last Of Us. He shoots first and doesn’t ask questions, period. He sees other people—like the Mennonite community Higs does supply runs for—as a liability. Even though he appreciates and needs Higs to watch his back, he does not allow sentiment to enter the relationship. What he and Higs have is transactional: If they didn’t look out for each other, they’d both be toast, and whatever security Bangley has comes down to his well-reasoned belief that Higs’ desire for self-preservation is as strong as his.
Higs, meanwhile, has had quite enough of all that. He ruefully declares that in the world that existed before a deadly pandemic wiped most of humanity out, he was a mechanic. He used to fix things—the implication being that while his skills have their uses, he resents the meanness of the world in which he now applies them. He is not fixing things for anyone, and so the selfless companionship of his dog Jasper is the most meaningful thing in the world to him.
This divide is The Dog Stars‘ best idea, and it breezes past it in the first act. There’s a weightier version of the film that doesn’t move on from this, instead choosing to really interrogate why grim libertarian survivalists like Bangley are portrayed as sensible by default in post-apocalyptic stories that always assume the worst of other people. This is the most odious idea popularized by zombie shows like The Walking Dead and The Last Of Us—that in a world full of actual horrifying monsters, the real ghouls are humans, who will always give into their most base impulses to survive. Unfortunately, The Dog Stars is only halfhearted in its refutation of this, relying mostly on sentiment to make its point.
Higs never really articulates a counterargument to Bangley beyond vague dissatisfaction and survivor’s guilt. Movie magic does the rest: loving close-ups on Jacob Elordi’s face, the thin-but-tender romance with Cima (Margaret Qualley), the repeated use of Hozier’s wistful, bluesy ballad “Like Real People Do.” The yearning isn’t ineffective, particularly if you love dogs and weepy Irish singer-songwriters. But the opposition is more verbose.
“With what we have here, you and me, we’re living the fuckin’ American Dream,” Bangley tells Higs during one of their spats, reminding him of all the fruits his “us vs.them” philosophy has borne. Later, in the film’s third act, when it’s revealed that the colony at Grand Junction is not the warm community Higs envisioned but a horrifying Fallout-esque den of past-obsessed cannibals—itself another place where The Dog Stars gestures at, but fails to make, a salient point about life after society falls—Darlene (Allison Janney), Grand Junction’s twisted overseer, mocks Higs for his idealism.
“You’re just so desperate for something better,” she crows into his radio as he flies away, “you’ll follow a voice just anywhere.”
In these taunts, The Dog Stars creaks under the weight of obligation to the genre, to what is expected of post-apocalyptic stories. The film barely wants to have this argument—in the end, Bangley begrudgingly joins Higs, Cima, and her Pops (Guy Pearce) among the Mennonites, even picking up a guitar during festivities. But it’s an argument worth having. What has the 21st-century obsession with the post-apocalypse done to us? Are stories about finding community after the collapse, like Station Eleven or The Leftovers, doomed to be the exceptions to the pop cultural rule?
Perhaps it is a failure of The Dog Stars that the story never properly wrestles with a tension that is clearly felt in its script, its performances, in the clash between director Ridley Scott’s wide-angle appreciation of open skies and mountain ranges and the arresting, jagged bursts of violence and horror that are more familiar to his body of work. But for those accustomed to this nihilistic genre trend, the film’s exhaustion is reason enough to root for it—not too strongly, mind you, but with a sigh of recognition, sinking into the grass as Hozier plays, feeling deeply that there are better ways for us to spend our lives than having the same arguments over and over again.
Keep scrolling for more great stories.