Ridley Scott's The Dog Stars Lands as Late-August Misfire
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- The Dog Stars is a $110m-budget postapocalyptic thriller directed by Ridley Scott and adapted from Peter Heller's 2012 novel, starring Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Guy Pearce, Margaret Qualley, and Allison Janney
- The film was yanked from a more promising late-March release date and unspooled into late August — a dumping-ground weekend the reviewer calls 'appropriate punishment' for a film that had multiple red flags flying
- Mark L Smith's script is criticized for clumsy exposition, stiff dialogue, and underdeveloped character dynamics between optimist Hig (Elordi) and cynic Bangley (Brolin), with characters that 'never feel convincingly lived-in'
- Jacob Elordi delivers what the reviewer calls a 'boringly absent lead performance of empty, stoic stares,' a comedown from his Oscar-nominated turn in Frankenstein, though the 'puddle-deep' script is partly blamed
- Ridley Scott's direction is described as 'oddly directed yet not odd enough,' with laptop-grade visual effects (including one explosion that 'looks laptop-made') and a general air of disinterest, despite stunning rural-Italian scenery doubling for rural America
- The film opens in Australian cinemas on 27 August and in the US and UK on 28 August
Why it matters: A $110m budgeted Ridley Scott film with an Oscar-nominated lead, two Oscar-nominated supporting actors, and an Oscar winner in the cast represents an unusual concentration of prestige credentials for a late-August dumping-ground slot — the kind of release pattern studios reserve for films they've lost confidence in. With Deadline offering a counterpoint by calling it 'sharp,' the critical split could determine whether this lands as a niche curiosity or a Scott-career footnote.
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