By Dan Skip Allen

I wouldn’t be saying anything surprising when I say the pandemic took a lot of people by storm a few years ago. The country hadn’t had one in a hundred years. It was a miracle people in the government knew how to prepare for it. “The Dog Stars” is a film based on the book by Peter Heller that basically gives viewers an idea of what it would be like if a pandemic ravaged the country and it became a dystopian place where people had to use their knowledge and wits to survive against wild mobs and psycho societies that eat people to survive. 1935 is that long from now, so it’s a bit alarming that this could possibly happen, but it could. You never know. The film does a good job of showing what could possibly happen in a world like this.

Hig (Jacob Elordi) is a man who lives in a remote airport in the mountains of Colorado, Erie, with a close friend Bangley (Josh Brolin), who is a survivalist. They protect their land with high-powered machine guns from a watchtower. Shooting anyone, they deem a threat. They get along pretty well with each other. His only means of transportation is a small Yellow Cessna plane. He uses it to do scouting in Denver and other areas. He even visits another community of Mennonites who look forward to his visits. All in all, they have a good thing going for themselves. Hig is lonely, having lost his wife a number of years before. So he wants to go visit some other areas leaving Bangley behind to fend for himself. His plane has mechanical problems, though, and he has to land in a valley far from his home. He ends up meeting a woman, Cima (Margaret Qualley) and her father Pops (Guy Pearce). They are not friendly at first but eventually come to like Hig and help him. As things tend to happen in a dystopian world, they come under threat from outsiders who want what they have.

Ridley Scott tends to make movies about bigger than life characters or large scale stories of big adventures like “Glafiator” “Napoleon”, “The Martian” and “Thelma and Louise” to name a few. Every once in a while, he’ll tell a smaller, more intimate story like this one. The scale isn’t that big, and the adventure is a relatively small one in comparison to going to Mars or being the ruler of a country in a major historical time period or an epic drama set during the age of Rome and gladiatorial fights. It’s an intimate character driven story of survival and finding those who can make their true friends in an unfriendly world. This is a big blockbuster, but it has a big heart and shows a near future. I think we all should worry about it.

Scott shows the scale that he can go to with all of the flying sequences. There are at least five or more scenes with Elordi’s character flying the plane over the vast wilderness and mountains of the western United States. These shots are gorgeously shot by cinematographer Eric Messerschmidt. They all made me want to get up in a plane and go somewhere myself. Even the various locations from a hillside area to a small town called Grand Junction looked beautiful. Grand Junction didn’t end up as beautiful as it was first shown, but that’s a spoiler, and I can’t say much more about that here in this review. Even when people attack the various areas, they look amazing. One scene was shot using night vision goggles, and it looked cool. Scott shows he knows how to shoot in scale, though that’s the point of what I’m saying. 

Scott has a small cast in this film if you only count the main four or five players, and with that, the actors have to do a lot of the heavy lifting regarding the story and the dialogue. I like the friendship between Elordi’s character and Brolins.They have a big brother little brother dynamic going on. They both have a specific set of skills that work together to help them survive. They curse at each other or even fight if the scene calls for it. On the other hand, Elordi and Qualley and Pearce have another dynamic. He even kills a void in the Mennonites world that is different from the other two situations he’s in. Elordi is the glue that keeps this story together, and he is fantastic in this role. I would love to be this guy in a dystopian future like this one. 

 One of the things I first noticed about this movie when I started watching it was that there was a song that caught my ear in the opening credits and played again later on in the film. It’s called “The Day the World Went Away” by Nine Inch Nails. I hadn’t heard this song before, and it really struck me hard. It was an acoustic version of the song that fit perfectly into this movie and the tone Scott was going for. It got me in the feels as they say. I felt connected to it and, in turn, to the film it was in. That’s the strength of music. It has to have a human connection, and this one did for me. I love finding new music like this in films.

“The Dog Stars” isn’t anything new or something fresh filmgoers haven’t seen before, but it has a message about what could happen if we as a society aren’t careful. I can see why Scott wanted to adapt it into a film, though. There are epic fight sequences and Grand beautiful vista’s to view in the small plane. The character work by the cast is fantastic, and Elordi is doing an amazing job carrying the load. I like the intimate feel of the story with the music that matches the tone. This is a film a lot of people should see because of what it’s trying to say about society. It’s a possible future that doesn’t look that good. Set only nine years from now, Scott and company want to think about what could have happened had the right people not stepped in and saved our backsides a few years ago. It’s a sobering look as something I’m not looking forward to anytime soon.

🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 stars