Phoenix 24
Ridley Scott delivers impressive landscapes but too little emotional or narrative urgency.
LOS ANGELES, UNITED STATES
Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars arrives in cinemas with an accomplished cast and a promising literary foundation, yet Euronews Culture’s reviewer places it firmly among the director’s disappointments. The criticism is an editorial assessment rather than an objective verdict, although the film has also received broadly mixed to negative reviews from other critics.
Adapted from Peter Heller’s 2012 novel, the story follows Hig, a former pilot played by Jacob Elordi, after a pandemic has killed most of humanity, including his wife. He survives at an abandoned Colorado airfield with his dog Jasper and Bangley, a heavily armed former Marine portrayed by Josh Brolin. Hig retains more faith in humanity than his defensive companion and continues flying a small aircraft in search of other survivors.
A mysterious radio transmission eventually leads him beyond their protected territory. He encounters Cima, played by Margaret Qualley, and her father, portrayed by Guy Pearce, creating the possibility of intimacy and a life extending beyond basic survival. Violent groups known as reapers threaten that fragile hope.
The principal criticism is that the film combines familiar elements without developing a distinct identity. Its pandemic, isolated survivor, dangerous journey and violent scavenger motifs recall 28 Days Later, I Am Legend, Mad Max and Fallout. Similarities to earlier works do not automatically demonstrate artistic failure, but the reviewer argues that Scott’s film lacks the suspense, terror and philosophical depth needed to transform those influences.
Mark L. Smith’s screenplay attempts to operate simultaneously as an introspective character study and a post-apocalyptic action thriller. According to the Euronews assessment, it succeeds fully as neither because the characters remain underdeveloped and the narrative says too little about grief, social collapse or the moral compromises of survival. The slow pace consequently feels empty rather than contemplative.
Elordi provides the necessary physical presence and quiet melancholy, but the role gives him limited material with which to create a more complex protagonist. Brolin supplies greater personality as the hardened Bangley, while Margaret Qualley and Guy Pearce enter a story that does not explore their characters as deeply as the cast might suggest.
Erik Messerschmidt’s cinematography is identified as the production’s clearest strength, giving the devastated landscape visual grandeur. Strong imagery, however, cannot substitute for dramatic momentum. The Dog Stars may still appeal to admirers of Scott, Elordi or restrained survival dramas, but its central weakness is not incompetence. It is the sense that audiences have travelled through this apocalypse before and found more compelling reasons to remain there.
Lo visible y lo oculto, en contexto. / The visible and the hidden, in context.