The Dog Stars (2026)

Plot of The Dog Stars: Hig and Bangley are a couple of guys who are living on an abandoned airfield in Colorado after an extreme version of flu has killed nearly everyone on the planet. All isolated communities are threatened by marauding  gangs of one sort or another but Bangley spends his days in a watchtower, killing any interlopers with a sniper rifle. Hig flies a small plane with his dog Jasper, getting supplies from an empty city, visiting his former home where he imagines he sees his wife and landing at a small community to give them stuff. When his plane’s engine fails he lands in a meadow and links up with Cima and her dad, eventually rescuing them from a band of villains on horseback, and flying with them to Grand Junction which seems to be some sort of a haven, but which turns out to be anything but.

Content: No sex or nudity. Quite a bit of drinking in various environments, but no drunkenness. Extended scenes of Hig’s Cessna flying about with mountains in the background. Jasper the dog is seen to be an attractive character, so we are distressed when he is killed. When the good guys are attacked by the gangs, in the case of Cima, her dad and Hig, by a gang on horseback, there is a lot of tension. In this case a rider is decapitated by the plane’s propeller. Grand Junction turns out to be anything but a haven as Hig, Cima and Pops are required to escape.

A View: This outing was panned by the critics more or less saying that it is same old post-apocalyptic shit, and actually it is. My wife and I saw this on the first day of its release in Madrid and I was surprised that, even though it was a Ridley Scott film, it was shown in what is probably the smallest screen in the cinema complex. There were not many of us watching it. It is a small film, without any of the massive multi actor scenarios which mark much of the director’s work. In the right cinema with IMAX the scenes of the plane flying about in shadow of the mountains must be impressive, but less so in our normal screen. The management must have known something. So if you have read this you know what to expect.  

Fun Fact: Jasper the dog was played by three more or less identical dogs, each trained to do different things.