The Dog Stars

“The Dog Stars asserts that in just 10 years, the American West will suddenly be filled with gruff white men.”

Title: The Dog Stars (2026)
Director: Ridley Scott 👨🏼🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿
Writers: Mark L. Smith 👨🏼🇺🇸 based on the novel by Peter Heller 👨🏼🇺🇸

Reviewed by Anthony Marcusa 👨🏼🇺🇸🇨🇦🌈♿

Technical: 2/5

Ridley Scott’s (The Martian, Alien) latest film, The Dog Stars, is a book-based adaptation. It follows a pure-hearted mechanic, Hig (Jacob Elordi), who lives at a destitute airfield in the Colorado mountains with his faithful dog, Jasper, and a father figure, Bangley (Josh Brolin). It’s 2036, and much of the world has succumbed to a pandemic, leaving feral, violent survivors behind.

Sound familiar? Perhaps a spin-off of The Last of Us with its western motif, overgrown cities, blue/gray color palette, and eerily similar acoustic guitar soundtrack? Not exactly. But of The Dog Stars’ many weaknesses, its most egregious misstep is that it’s derivative. (And dull.) It’s yet another post-apocalyptic story about finding humanity in inhumane times, and Scott can’t seem to figure out what he wants this movie to be: a drama about grief, a survival thriller, or a tourism ad for Colorado.

In the film’s more meditative moments, Hig travels by a rusty plane across a quiet landscape, helping a secluded Mennonite community and searching for resources and survivors. But then random invading collectives turn the movie into a violent action film. These sequences feel forced, as is the romance between Hig and Cima (Margaret Qualley), a grieving woman he encounters on one of his searches.

You can’t blame the actors for The Dog Stars’ shortcomings; they’ve shown themselves capable of far better work. The poor script drags them down. Benedict Wong, the patriarch of the Mennonite community, bears the worst of it with only a few lines of obvious exposition in which he reminds Hig of the virus that wiped out most of the population.

Gender: 2.5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES, but barely

The Dog Stars’ lack of imagination extends to the assertion that in just 10 years, the American West will suddenly be filled with gruff men. Among them, Hig is the warmest, though he still talks about working hard with his hands and leading an honest life. Bangley is more reactive, drinking whiskey and shooting any trespassers before asking questions.

Hig stumbles upon Cima and her father, Pops (Guy Pearce), a protective farmer who likes small-town diners. Cima has even less development than Pops, with Qualley resigned to playing a mere love interest. Meanwhile, Alison Janney gets a small role as Darlene, a creepy cult leader. She shares a very short conversation with Cima, giving The Dog Stars its extremely brief Bechdel Test pass.

Race: 1/5

Wong is the only person of color to have a named speaking role in this film. His ethnic background is never mentioned, making the “representation” shallow. The only other examples we see are a smattering of non-white actors in the background.

Yet somehow, The Dog Stars finds a way to pull in racial stereotypes. In one sequence, Hig, Cima, and Pops are beset by invaders that many viewers have clocked as regressive. Critic Robert Daniels calls out a notable scene “depicting a hoard of goons approaching Pops’ ranch with the same visual and aural language applied to Indigenous warriors attacking white western settlements (the creaky sound design includes whoops and hollers).”

Writer Sandra Hale Schulman, of Cherokee Nation descent, explains how this narrative began over 100 years ago. “In 1914, influential filmmaker D.W. Griffith featured the ‘hostile savage’ stereotype in his The Battle at Elderbush Gulch. Red Indians—as they were referred to in the film—surround a family and threaten their lives until the white cavalry comes to their aid. The western genre became synonymous with this trope.” It’s a damned shame that The Dog Stars perpetuates this awful, persistent stain on cinema history.

Bonus for Age: +0.50

Brolin and Pearce are both 58 years old at the time of this review. Wong is 55, and Janney is 66. They all have authority and demonstrate some kind of skill set. For the men, it’s manual labor and surviving the land; for Janney, she’s in charge of a large cult living out of an airport.

Bonus for Disability : +0.25

In a brief moment, a Deaf child in the Mennonite community thanks Hig in ASL for dropping off supplies, and Hig responds in kind.

Mediaversity Grade: D 2.08/5

In 2012, NPR’s review of the original novel speaks to a more spiritual story that Scott’s The Dog Stars can't reconcile. Critic Jennifer Reese says of Hig, “A failed poet, on his forays into the wilderness to hunt for deer, his voice becomes lyrical.” Indeed, the movie has beautiful shots of Hig and his plane, and a quiet ending points to the book’s soulfulness—and to the better movie The Dog Stars could have been.

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Grade: DLiAugust 28, 2026