Does Ridley Scott even have a retirement plan at this point? I only ask because once again we catch the octogenarian auteur being absurdly prolific in his busy, winter years with his latest release, The Dog Stars. But rather than being a film about various, famous mutts (a Lassie biopic, anyone?), Sir Ridley’s latest sees him tackle an uncertain future in a way he hasn’t attempted before. We’ve seen Scott give us dystopian future shocks before in the form of Alien and Blade Runner, but this is the first time the director has fixed his distinctive eye on a truly post apocalyptic setting as he welcomes us to a world ravaged by an uncomfortably familiar flu virus.
However, while the future seems to look bleak, it’s also looking pretty good also, even beyond Scott’s celebrated visuals, in fact, as we have a cast that contains Jacob Elordi smoldering his way through the end of the world and Josh Brolin and Guy Pearce engaging in a good old fashioned grizzle fest.
The year is 2035 and in the wake of a devestating flu virus, earth’s population has dropped alarmingly. In this world we find Hig, a civilian pilot who has managed to carve out a passable existence with the aid of his adoring dog, Jasper, and Bangley, a craggy Marine obsessed with staying alive. However, as he continues to mourn the death of his wife in a very Jacob Elordi kind of way, he finds that mindlessly existing just isn’t enough anymore and seeks a life closer to the old world. While Bangley sneers at Hig’s longing, that doesn’t stop his partner hopping into his plane and searching for something more after a falling out between the two carries tragic repercussions.
Chasing a radio broadcast that suggests some sort of civilisation exists at a place called Grand Junction, Hig experiences some technical issues that causes him to crash land along the way. While he figures out how to get airborne once more, he stumbles upon father/daughter duo, Cima and Pops, who have been living a similarly reclusive life at the end of the world. While former rancher Pops is predictably suspicious about the brooding newcomer with perfect cheekbones, Cima is drawn to those soulful eyes and tragic backstory, and the two naturally start to bond. However, back at Bangley’s compound, the tough guy finds that a particularly vicious army of genocidal bezerkers calling themselves the Reapers have arrived to do some damage and this coincides with another, separate gang of scavengers discovering where Pops, Cima and Higs are.
In the chaos, everyone piles into the plane and head onward to Grand Junction to see if some vestige of humanity still exists, but in the very likely event that the place proves to be another rat trap full of lunatics, will there even still be a Bangley left to return to once the bullets and arrows start flying. Despite the fact that he has multiple people counting on him, will Hig finally discover what it is he’s so desperately searching for when – chances are – they’re sitting right next to him?
To be honest, The Dog Stars is something of an odd one – even from a director that’s not only once had Ray Liotta get force fed his own brain, but had dual Michael Fassbenders flirt while fluting. Tonally strange and totally reliant on movie logic, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more bizarre choices managed to alienate an audience not willing to play Scott’s eccentric game. However, just for original vibes alone, I have to say, I found this mixture of easy going apocalypse drama and random bursts of surrealism pretty fun, even if more hardened fans of the end of the world might find things a little slow going. Yes, there’s an argument to be made – mostly by me – that The Dog Stars may be one of the most relaxing movies set after a viral cataclysm you’ve ever seen, but if Mad Max Fury Road was the apocalypse you’d envision while snorting bath salts, The Dog Star is the equivalent of seeing it through a huge bag of weed.
We start off with Ridley finally getting to exorcise those demons left over from never getting his adaptation of I Am Legend off the ground, as Elordi’s Hig scours near-deserted cities and offers help to a nearby commune of peaceful Mennonites. While these moments recall many similar films from 28 Days Later to The Book Of Eli, Scott avoids tense silence in favour of a type of wounded chill-out vibe that attempts to harness Hig’s broody restlessness. But while Elordi is born to evoke fernweh with every ounce of his melancholy good looks (he spends most of the film with an approximation of Zoolander’s Blue Steel etched on those movies star looks), one of the main faults of the script is that it’s painfully obvious that what he’s looking for is literally all around him. I get what the movie is aiming for, but if I was one of the last people alive and Margret Qualley thought I was interesting enough to give me the once over, while Josh Brolin wanted to shoot frenzied cannibals with me, I’d actually be pretty chuffed. Hell, I’d just be happy with the insanely adorable dog.
However, off-setting that rather mellow vibe is the fact that Scott frequently punctuates the calm with moments of driving action or even Lynchian absurdism. The scene that sees Josh Brolin’s cynical survivalist square off with a gang of refugees from Neil Marshall’s Doomsday proves that Scott still knows his way around a brutalist action sequence, while the visit to Grand Junction, and Allison Janey’s stewardess attired eccentric, may be one of the weirdest things the director has ever done. To be honest, while it’s certainly memorable, some of it barely holds together and logic is sometimes strained to breaking, but I was rarely bored regardless which gear the film was currently in.
Anyone expecting a gritty, end of the world flick may very well be confused at the fact that so many of the survivors of a world ending illness are – to return back to Zoolander a moment – really really good-looking. Yes it’s a movie, so things like immaculate dental care and perfectly sculpted facial hair shouldn’t be that distracting; but I found it constantly amusing that Jacob Elordi looks far better existing in a desolate apocalypse than I actually do right now, and yet he still finds time to be professionally miserable. Anyone not willing to get on board with Elordi’s character being overwhelmingly self-centred while Ridley Scott engineers distracting tonal shifts on a whim, will doubtlessly find The Dog Stars rather frustrating. A good example is rather than being a major plot point, the much-hyped Reapers end up merely only being a side threat. However, thanks to Scott’s reliable visual dexterity (every shot is admittedly stunning) and the strangely easy-going take of a genre that usually known for whitening the knuckles, I found Scott’s latest attempt to avoid the old folk’s home to be fairly engrossing.
Predictably stunning to look at, Ridley Scott delivers his usual salad of gorgeous cinematography and arresting action beats. However, some will find this erratic use of tone and abnormally photogenic survivors to be more confounding than gripping. Still, it’s nice to see the end of the world portrayed as actually quite relaxing for once – even with the hordes of tattooed psychopaths.
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