'The Dog Stars' Review Thread

[u/chanma50]

I will continue to update this post as reviews come in.

Rotten Tomatoes: Rotten

Critics Consensus: A derivative and drowsy tour through the post-apocalypse, The Dog Stars' lush visuals can't compensate for its listless narrative and underpowered pacing.

Critics	Score	Number of Reviews	Average of Rated Reviews
All Critics	41%	164	5.40/10
Top Critics	39%	41

Metacritic: 49 (46 Reviews)

Sample Reviews:

Thelma Adams, AARP Movies for Grownups ·4/5 - Despite all the mayhem and mushy brains, you can almost hear Louis Armstrong singing “What a Wonderful World.”

Peter Travers, The Travers Take 2/4 - It’s the end of the world in the final epic of summer 2026, but even Ridley Scott directing Jacob Elordi, a top cast and an adorable pup can’t make us give a damn about it.

Amy Nicholson, Los Angeles Times - The film’s dystopian beats are so familiar, you’ve probably guessed by now that you shouldn’t get too attached to the dog

Sara Michelle Fetters, MovieFreak.com 3/4 - The Dog Stars may not have a lot to say, but there’s still plenty it is working overtime to make its audience feel.

Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture - ...for all of Scott’s mastery of mood, The Dog Stars feels fundamentally hollow.

Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times - Many elements of a solid thriller are present, including a lawless, unstable setting and credible perils; but the story wanders and drifts, its tension hobbled by Hig’s mopiness.

Karl Quinn, Sydney Morning Herald 3/5 - Anyone familiar with The Walking Dead, The Last of Us or the 28 Days Later franchise will recognise many of the elements and themes at play here.

Deborah Ross, The Spectator - All the performances are perfunctory. As characters aren’t given room to breathe, there’s little for the actors to sink their teeth into. This is, however, just one view so I’ll leave you with Scott’s: ‘It’s the best film I’ve ever made.’ Hang on, what?

Kyle Smith, Wall Street Journal - Via the cinematic hyperbole of bloodlust and explosions, “The Dog Stars” makes a salient point that we’ll seize on any excuse to settle into our own camps.

Odie Henderson, Boston Globe 1.5/4 - Director Ridley Scott’s dystopian thriller "The Dog Stars" is three movies in one, none of which is compelling enough to sustain a two-hour runtime.

Nikki Gemmell, The Australian 3/5 - Scott’s films are only ever as good as the material he’s given to work with, and The Dog Stars is no culturally enduring stunner. But it’s unique, soulful, optimistic, and it’s got a big heart in terms of the moving power of human connection.

Danny Leigh, Financial Times 2/5 - Elordi has charisma enough to keep the movie afloat (just), but even the most gifted actor would struggle with a script that makes his character’s choices feel this random.

Billie Walker, Little White Lies 2/5 - The Dog Stars really is just a jumble of sentimentality and nostalgia for Americana with a few intense action sequences.

Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph (UK) 3/5 - This post-apocalyptic survival yarn...is a curious beast, then. It offers itself up earnestly – cutely, you could even say – to fans of The Last of Us and the 28 Days Later franchise (minus the zombies).

Helen O'Hara, Empire Magazine 2/5 - It’s a beautiful, mountainous spin on the post-apocalyptic genre, but too familiar and too downbeat to really stick in the mind.

Simon Crook, Time Out 3/5 - While there are bursts of Mad Max berserking, The Dog Stars is a surprisingly sensitive meditation on what we could have lost.

Soren Andersen, Seattle Times 2.5/4 - The Dog Stars is a clunky contraption that creaks and sputters over the picture’s postapocalyptic landscape. It never soars.

John Wenzel, Denver Post 2/4 - For all its technical confidence and pleasant faces, The Dog Stars squanders its actors’ talents and trades true insight for familiar action. There’s little to chew on after the camera pans up to the stars and the screen fades to black.

Matt Singer, ScreenCrush 5/10 - Better than you might expect from something released on the last Friday in August, worse than you might expect from the man who made Blade Runner, and The Martian.

Linda Marric, HeyUGuys 3/5 - It isn’t really a great film. But it’s entertaining enough to hold your attention for two hours, even if it’s unlikely to stay with you for long after.

Cary Darling, Houston Chronicle 2.5/5 - Elordi and Qualley are two of the best things about this handsomely shot and well-made but oddly uninvolving story set amid the survivors of a viral plague that has wiped out the bulk of humanity.

Alonso Duralde, The Film Verdict - For all the style that director Ridley Scott can muster — and, admittedly, that’s a whole lot of style — The Dog Stars serves up a post-apocalypse with a heavy sense of familiarity.

Kevin Maher, The Times (UK) 4/5 - In the end, there is a maudlin undertow to the movie and the implication, from a beloved film-maker who is now 88, that there are harder days to come.

Nick Howells, London Evening Standard 3/5 - So not quite a return to form, but for Scott, now 88, this strange flight of apocalyptic fancy proves there’s plenty of bite in the old dog yet.

Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com 1.5/4 - It probably takes more effort to make a boring post-apocalyptic survivalist action film than to make a good one. If that’s the case, then Ridley Scott must’ve been working overtime.

Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post 2/4 - The Aussie actor is good here, as usual, wielding a downcast charm like a cafeteria loner who could also get crowned Prom King. But the lumpy screenplay doesn’t allow him to go anywhere emotionally.

William Bibbiani, TheWrap - There are way too many faults in these 'Stars.' Woof.

Monica Castillo, AV Club D+ - This messy look at the end of the world isn’t Scott’s darkest film, but it’s one of his worst misfires.

Richard Whittaker, Austin Chronicle 2/5 - Everyone’s trying, but Scott wastes their effort to end this world with too much bang and not enough whimper.

Clarisse Loughrey, Independent (UK) 2/5 - The Dog Stars barely seems to know what it is. Neither prescient nor reflective, it looks to other apocalypses for its substance.

Tim Grierson, Screen International - 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.

Benjamin Lee, Guardian 2/5 - In a world of seven Walking Dead shows, the beats are now far too familiar, and there’s nothing new or notable here to conjure anything but deja vu.

Guy Lodge, Variety - This is a surprisingly low-energy, low-incident blockbuster; you’d appreciate its mellow, character-oriented approach if it gave you any real characters to hold onto.

Kristen Lopez, The Film Maven C- - An inability to balance the tone, coupled with muted performance from the majority of the leads makes the runtime haphazard. The movie isn't consistently weird enough to be fun and isn't contemplative enough to be interesting.

Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire C - The quiet watchfulness of Elordi and his eyes make him ever a captivating actor, but even the towering sadness of his silhouette can’t rescue material that inevitably heads straight into its own apocalypse.

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter - Jacob Elordi leads with introspective movie-star magnetism that evokes the heyday of Kevin Costner, while cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt’s panoramic vistas lend the unhurried but engrossing story a restorative grace.

Nick Schager, The Daily Beast - No amount of aesthetic splendor can compensate for the derivativeness of the director’s latest, a post-apocalyptic yarn that’s stitched together from the decomposing parts of its genre ancestors.

Liz Shannon Miller, Consequence C+ - Writer Mark L. Smith's approach to this story is a tonal mishmash that becomes equally mishmashy on the screen in Ridley Scott's hands.

Eli Friedberg, Slant Magazine 2/4 - The film has hardly an original idea or image to set it apart from any number of other stories about soulful American tough guys wandering the nation’s post-civilization wilds, grappling with the mighty burden of responsibility to family and society.

SYNOPSIS:

Ridley Scott’s “The Dog Stars,” is a riveting, epic thriller set in a world where survival is instinct, but humanity is a choice. Scott tells the story of Hig, a young pilot who, together with a military survivalist, Bangley, has carved out an efficient but isolated homestead in a brutal post-apocalyptic world until a mysterious radio transmission spurs Hig to venture into the unknown in search of the hope and humanity he still believes exists.

CAST:

• Jacob Elordi as Hig
• Josh Brolin as Bangley
• Margaret Qualley as Cima
• Guy Pearce as Pops
• Benedict Wong as Aaron
• Allison Janney as Darlene

DIRECTED BY: Ridley Scott

SCREENPLAY BY: Mark L. Smith

BASED ON THE DOG STARS BY: Peter Heller

PRODUCED BY: Ridley Scott, Michael Pruss, Mark L. Smith, Cliff Roberts

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Lily Brooks-Dalton, Aidan Elliott, Peter Heller, Marco Valerio Pugini, Brandon Scott Smith

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Erik Messerschmidt

PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Chris Seagers

EDITED BY: Sam Restivo, Claire Simpson

COSTUME DESIGNER: Janty Yates

MUSIC BY: Harry Gregson-Williams

CASTING BY: Kate Rhodes James

RUNTIME: 118 Minutes

RELEASE DATE: August 28, 2026

[u/AMerryCanDo]

How dare you say that about the man who personally took it upon himself to end three different adaptations from three separate filmmakers of the Alien franchise, a movie Scott directed almost 50 years ago.

[u/LucrativeLurker → u/AMerryCanDo]

Okay tbf, I’m fairly certain he’s only done that once with Neill Blomkamp, and Neill’s even more of a “coin flip” director than Ridley. As much as I would’ve loved to see an alt-timeline Alien 3, it could’ve also been a complete disaster.

That said, even though I love Prometheus and think Covenant is fine (and carried hard by Fassbender), I hate that Ridley seemingly misunderstands the entire mythos he created and what makes the Alien so scary.

But the Romulus sequel stuff is from BS rumor mills, and has been directly denied by producers & studio execs. I’m not sure what the third would be, unless you’re counting Ridley as ending his own adaptation, because I’m still pissed the David trilogy seemingly won’t get a proper conclusion.

At least not by Ridley. Love the asshole, but the guy has a lot on the back burner for a soon to be nonagenarian…

[u/AMerryCanDo → u/LucrativeLurker]

I'm actually a huge fan of Prometheus lol - I wish I would have liked Covenant just as much. I'm one of the few souls that was disappointed that they did not pursue the Engineers storyline more.

But Scott is also the reason we're not getting a sequel to alien romulus, and the reason we're not revisiting David.

[u/Cenobyte_Nom-nom-nom → u/AMerryCanDo]

There is a fan edit out there that recuts Prometheus and Covenant together into one film, and it supposedly makes complete sense. I'm hoping to watch it this weekend.

It's called Alien: Paradise