‘The Dog Stars’ review: Jacob Elordi and Margaret Qualley navigate the apocalypse in muted, tender Ridley Scott drama

Dir: Ridley Scott. US/UK. 2026. 118mins

A handful of survivors navigate the postapocalyptic landscape in The Dog Stars, one of Ridley Scott’s most muted and tender films. This adaptation of Peter Heller’s 2012 novel is reminiscent of myriad previous stories of societal collapse and does not always sidestep the genre’s predictable elements. But it is ultimately redeemed by the veteran director’s careful attention to his characters, who are far more engaging in their shared grief than when combating the sorts of foes one expects in this kind of film.

Even though The Dog Stars can be wobbly in its execution, Scott gives the story an understated warmth

Arriving in UK and US theatres on August 28, The Dog Stars may disappoint viewers wanting an explosive action-horror comparable to I Am Legend, The Last Of Us or 28 Years Later. (For one thing, the film features no monsters or zombies.) Scott has star power in Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley and Guy Pearce, but nonetheless this small-scale drama opens at a challenging time at the end of the summer movie season. Muted reviews are likely to further hinder the picture’s prospects.

In the year 2035, mechanic Hig (Elordi) lives with his colleague Bangley (Brolin) on a deserted airstrip in Eerie, Colorado, which they guard from roaming scavengers. Only a few years earlier, a deadly flu epidemic wiped out most of the population — including Hig’s wife and newborn — but he holds out hope that some semblance of civilization may still exist in the nearby town of Grand Junction. Flying in his beat-up Cessna to make contact with Grand Junction, he is instead forced to crash land in a remote forest, there befriending widow Cima (Qualley) and her well-armed father Pops (Pearce), who is wary of strangers.

Although The Dog Stars does include a few action scenes, much of the film is quiet and contemplative as the melancholy Hig struggles to come up with reasons to keep living. Whereas Bangley relishes this survivalist existence, Hig cannot stop mourning his departed family, desperate to find signs of community. He was not planning on meeting Cima and Pops but, despite the older man’s threats to shoot him if he doesn’t leave, Hig quickly gravitates to this daughter and father. Cima, who also lost a spouse in the flu epidemic, is equally drawn to Hig, each of them grieving while noticing a shared attraction.

Mark L. Smith’s screenplay contains some thuddingly obvious set pieces — one involving Allison Janney as a potential saviour — that feel rehashed from dozens of previous postapocalyptic thrillers. Even the introduction of random gangs of savage scavengers feels de rigueur for this kind of picture, with Scott not helping matters by filming them in a manner that uncomfortably recalls Hollywood’s bygone, offensive depiction of rampaging Native Americans.

And yet within this familiar narrative framework, Scott still manages to highlight intimate moments between his characters that speak to larger ideas about the value of survival in a world that seems hopeless. Scott’s regular cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt shoots the Italian wilderness (which doubles for the story’s Colorado settings) with a sense of profound emptiness, suggesting that Hig and his cohorts’ most fearsome obstacle is not scavengers but, rather, an overwhelming sense of loss for the lives they once had.

Elordi and Brolin’s brotherly, playfully antagonistic rapport — Hig more gentle, Bangley more militaristic — helps establish The Dog Stars’ human-sized stakes, and Elordi proves just as convincing when his character enters the orbit of Cima and Pops. The budding relationship between Hig and Cima is explored with an unhurried ease, which allows these two grieving souls to slowly open up to one another. Other survivors have far more extreme personalities — a conscious decision on Scott’s part to contrast them with Hig and his friends, who have not lost their humanity amidst the world’s end. But those sequences feel far too broad as they sit awkwardly alongside The Dog Stars’ more hushed interludes.

Even though The Dog Stars can be wobbly in its execution, Scott’s affection for his main characters gives the story an understated warmth. In films such as Alien and Blade Runner he has evinced a gloomy outlook, seeing existence as one of endless struggle. But occasionally, the director has permitted himself a little more faith in people. His new picture lacks the ingenuity and confidence of his 2015 picture The Martian, but the two films share a stubborn belief that humans’ inherent decency and resourcefulness can, every once in a while, save the day.