The Dog Stars – The Stars After the End

A man and a dog in an old 1950s Cessna survey a post-apocalyptic landscape (were it not for the green forests glimpsed in the distance—partly the Belluno Pre-Alps, and partly the area around Avezzano). The pilot is played by Jacob Elordi; in the film he is called Hig. His wife is dead, and the pandemic has almost wiped out the world as we know it. The few survivors live in terror of the Reapers, who kill and steal everything they find. Hig has found refuge in a hangar alongside former Marine Josh Brolin. A man of few words, but an excellent shot. A radio broadcast suggests that humanity hasn’t entirely disappeared; it has merely taken refuge in a safe place. Since one cannot survive on visits to a Mormon family in the neighbourhood alone, Hig sets off on a journey. He braves dangers and guns, loneliness and faint hope. Until he meets the blue eyes and stunning legs of Margaret Qualley (daughter of Andie McDowell, and a younger clone of Demi Moore in Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance). The young woman is always wearing extremely short-cut jeans, even though we imagine the post-apocalyptic world to be full of dangers – or have the brambles, mosquitoes and snakes disappeared too? The film is adapted from a novel by Peter Heller entitled The Dog Stars, and the moral of the story hangs over every frame. Screenwriter Mark L. Smith of “The Revenant” is already no stranger to extreme survival.