After reading The Dog Stars novel by Peter Heller, I was curious about the film, which came out earlier this year. The movie took a critical bashing and has a critic’s review score on Rotten Tomatoes of 41%. It deserved more than that.
The film does have issues though and the problem comes from the source material. The novel is a combination of deep personal reflection, and action scenes. The mix works well as a written story, but a change of tone from thoughtful rumination into action mode is always going to be challenging in a movie. This is usually when writers have to make a choice. Should they be faithful to the source material or change it? In this case they tried to be faithful to the novel (although some things were changed to compress the timeline). What would this story have been like as a purely action movie or as a relationship focused film?
The problem here is that prolonged reflection doesn’t sit well with the fast pace needed for an action movie. This also makes Hig look weak as an ‘action hero’. You can have thoughtful mode or action mode, but not both.
The film does look great though. The dystopian urban scenes, and the landscapes are beautifully shot. There is some overly expositional dialogue and an unecessary ‘F’ words though. Plus, the separate elements don’t convincingly flow into one another. The flashbacks, Hig’s rumination, his relationship with Jasper the dog, his relationship with Cima, and his relationship with Bangley never quite mesh together. Maybe cutting some of them out would have allowed time for the others? The different action locations have a similar disconnection and jarring change of tone. The Grand Junction airport scene felt more like something from 28 Years Later, or the underground bunker in A Boy and His Dog. The Reapers attack felt like a mashup between an old Western and Mad Max. In spite of this, I did enjoy the film. Dare I say it – could a voiceover have helped mesh the elements together?