THE DOG STARS (2026)

Genre: Drama
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley, Allison Janney, Benedict Wong, Guy Pearce
Runtime: 1 hr 58 mins
Rating: NC16 (Violence and Coarse Language)
Released By: Walt Disney
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 27 August 2026

Synopsis: Based on Peter Heller’s captivating bestseller, “The Dog Stars”, the film tells the story of Hig (Jacob Elordi), a young pilot who, together with a military survivalist, Bangley (Josh Brolin), has carved out an efficient but isolated homestead in a brutal post-apocalyptic world. But when Hig receives a mysterious radio transmission, he ventures into the unknown in search of the hope and humanity he still believes exist.

Movie Review:

There is certainly no shortage of stories about the end of the world. Coming so soon after HBO’s "The Last of Us" and "28 Years Later", "The Dog Stars" was always going to invite comparisons with both. Unfortunately, this is also where Ridley Scott’s latest comes off looking rather underwhelming. It lacks the deep humanity and emotional complexity of "The Last of Us", just as it never approaches the visceral ferality of "28 Years Later". There are scattered bursts of violence, tenderness and terror, but too little that feels truly new in a genre already crowded with abandoned settlements, roaming killers and traumatised survivors.

"The Dog Stars" works better once you stop expecting a full-blooded apocalyptic thriller and take it instead as an intimate drama about a man learning how to live after losing almost everything. That may seem uncharacteristic of Scott, a filmmaker more readily associated with imposing worlds and muscular spectacle. Here, however, the ruined civilisation is mostly background. Scott and screenwriter Mark L. Smith, adapting Peter Heller’s bestseller, are less interested in explaining how society collapsed than in examining the quieter devastation left inside one survivor. 

That survivor is Hig, played by Jacob Elordi as a reticent loner still haunted by the death of his pregnant wife. He lives at a remote airfield, where his small propeller plane gives him both a practical means of patrolling the surrounding country and a temporary escape from the life below. His closest companion is Jasper, his dog, while his main human contact is Bangley (Josh Brolin), a former Marine turned heavily armed survivalist. Hig also brings food to a nearby Mennonite community and helps with the occasional mechanical repair, small acts of kindness that reveal how stubbornly he clings to an idea of decency.

His arrangement with Bangley is the film’s most immediately enjoyable relationship. Hig remains curious about other people; Bangley assumes that anyone approaching their perimeter probably deserves to be shot. Brolin plays him with a gruff, self-deprecating manner that stops the character from becoming a generic doomsday gun nut. Their routines, arguments and begrudging dependence on one another give the first half a lived-in quality, even when the storytelling itself is in no hurry to go anywhere.

That routine is disrupted after Hig is ambushed by a group of stragglers. A patchy radio signal he has occasionally picked up while flying then leads him farther from home and eventually into the company of Pops (Guy Pearce) and his daughter Cima (Margaret Qualley). Without giving too much away, the four principal characters will have to contend with Reapers as well as a cannibalistic community, forcing Hig to confront once again the fragile border between survival and mere existence. Scott can still stage violence with brutal clarity, and the film briefly comes alive whenever the danger closes in.

Those moments, however, are relatively scarce. The Dog Stars is ultimately a slow-burn coming-of-age story for Hig, or perhaps, more accurately, a coming-back-to-life story. Less patient viewers will understandably be put off by its languor, even as others might admire the film’s immersive visuals and meditative mood. The unhurried pace is clearly deliberate, but deliberateness alone does not stop some passages from feeling dramatically thin. 

It remains fitfully engaging largely because of the four central performers. Elordi makes Hig’s melancholy feel almost dissociative, as though the character has survived physically while leaving some essential part of himself behind. At times, though, the same restraint makes him seem merely blank, and the film does not always supply enough psychological detail to bridge the difference. Brolin is livelier and more naturally entertaining, while Pearce gives Pops a wary laconicism that suggests a lifetime of compromises. Qualley brings an open-hearted earnestness to Cima, giving the film some warmth without turning her into a convenient cure for Hig’s grief.

The scenery helps too. Erik Messerschmidt’s cinematography finds beauty in the empty forests, mountain horizons and aerial passages, giving Hig’s flights an almost spiritual calm. Yet the images occasionally promise a grandeur that the drama beneath them cannot quite match. Like the film itself, they are handsome, mournful and sometimes strangely inert. 

Amid the continuing stream of post-apocalyptic entertainment, it is not surprising, though still unfortunate, that "The Dog Stars" risks getting lost in the crowd. It neither reinvents the genre nor ranks among Scott’s more memorable achievements. But viewers willing to accept its particular pace and rhythm may still find some cathartic pleasure in its modest optimism. The film’s final argument is a simple one: even after the world has ended, grief need not be the end of a life. Somewhere beneath the dog stars, there may still be another person, another purpose and another reason to keep going. 

Movie Rating:

(Though overshadowed by stronger post-apocalyptic fare, 'The Dog Stars' rewards patient viewers with strong performances and a quietly cathartic story about finding a reason to live again)

Review by Gabriel Chong