The Dog Stars keeps a runway

Elordi plays Hig, a widower and former mechanic who still flies. THR says he is inseparable from Jasper, a Belgian Malinois with him since the dog was a pup, the most enduring link to happier times with his late wife Melissa, played by Sai Bennett. Brolin is Bangley, a tough military veteran who, despite a previous life in Army Aviation, never learned to fly. They share quarters in a converted hangar at an abandoned airstrip in Erie, Colorado, behind a defensive perimeter. Those are published rooms. A hangar. A strip. A dog. A Cessna on reconnaissance toward what is left of Denver.

The flu is a decade back. THR puts the story in 2035, a decade after the population was decimated by an influenza pandemic. That flu took Melissa. Hig flies a battered Cessna to check for threats and collect fuel and supplies. Bangley keeps weapons and fortifications. Hig, THR says, is unwilling to turn his back on human kindness, which puts him at odds with Bangley even when the latter saves him. THR said Elordi exudes a soulfulness and sensitivity, and that Brolin is a hardass with a well-camouflaged core of decency.

A radio signal from Grand Junction is the door out of the hangar. Hig takes off. Engine trouble puts him down near an isolated valley ranch. Margaret Qualley is Cima, a young widow. Guy Pearce is her hyper-vigilant father, known as Pops. THR: Pearce bristles with hostility in early scenes but gradually transitions into warmth and trust. Qualley, Rooney wrote, gives one of her loveliest performances, free from quirks or showy dramatic moments, portraying Cima as a woman bruised by grief but unwilling to shut herself off from the possibility of love. That is the farm. You walk it as a second homestead, not as a twist.

Allison Janney's Darlene is the airport. THR describes a bizarre interlude: crazy-lady makeup, a former flight attendant in a vintage airline uniform, serving martinis to visitors. The line Rooney quotes is hers: Once a stewardess always a stewardess! The peg is the uniform at a post-apocalyptic airport. The Guardian, less kind on 25 August, found the third-act sequence derivative. The uniform is the craft object. A stewardess costume in a dead terminal is costume design you can look at.

Erik Messerschmidt shot it. THR says his panoramic vistas, from locations in Italy's Alpine foothills and the mountains of the Abruzzo and Lazio regions, are majestic stand-ins for Colorado, with plenty of texture especially when seen in IMAX, dynamic camerawork in action scenes and soaring, crystalline images in the flight sequences. Film Threat, also in the late-August window, said it is impossible to talk about the picture without praising that cinematography and that the film deserves to be seen in IMAX, on the widest screen available: emerald mountains against graying skies, abandoned traces of civilization. The Film Verdict on 26 August said the bigger the screen, the better. Geekster's 1 September review, in Dutch, still led with the aircraft shots and the landscapes. The runway is a photographic object. Walk the air.

Principal photography began in Bordano, Italy, in April 2025, then Cansiglio, Abruzzo, Rome, and Pinewood. Italian set reports are the public log. Chris Seagers is production designer. Janty Yates designed costumes. Claire Simpson and Sam Restivo edited. Harry Gregson-Williams scored it. THR heard acoustic guitar, Dobro, and orchestral strings. That is the sound of the hangar at dusk, not a joke track.

20th Century Studios and Scott Free produced. Disney distributes. Scott produced with Michael Pruss, Mark L. Smith, and Cliff Roberts. The picture premiered at the Odeon Luxe Leicester Square on 20 August 2026. The American and British street date was 28 August. Australia, The Guardian printed, was 27 August. It had been dated 27 March 2026 before Disney moved it. One hundred and eighteen minutes. Rated R. Benedict Wong plays Aaron, who heads a Mennonite community in a secluded valley. Those names are the rest of the household.

Rooney, at 88 for Scott, called it arguably his best since The Martian eleven years earlier, a rare ruminative mood, muted but never dull, an appealingly mellow watch even in the shadow of death. Film Threat scored it 8/10. The aggregators are cooler. Rotten Tomatoes, as of the end of August, printed 40 percent of 163 critics. Metacritic 49 from 46. CinemaScore C+. Mixed is the honest weather. The craft still stands up in a dark room. House weather here is the hope the picture keeps, not a claim that the scoreboard is a rave.

Smith came from The Revenant and Twisters. Heller's novel is 2012. The 20th Century Studios synopsis says survival is instinct, but humanity is a choice, and that a mysterious radio transmission spurs Hig to search for the hope and humanity he still believes exists. Studio copy is studio copy. The reviews that can be stood on say the same thing in quieter language. Hig still believes something more is out there. Bangley does not. Cima will not shut the door. Darlene keeps the uniform. The Cessna still needs a strip. That is a picture you walk, hangar to ranch to terminal, without turning it into a comedy it is not.

Some of the concluding developments, Rooney wrote, provide hope for humanity's resilience. He also wrote that the ending feels abrupt and a little trite, and that the sentiment is not unearned. Hope is the published weather. Grief is the floor. You sit in IMAX and the mountains do the talking.

The picture is still on a screen you can buy a ticket for. Opened 28 August in the US and UK, 27 August in Australia. Reviews from 25 August through 1 September are the file. Elordi. Brolin. Qualley. Pearce. Janney in the uniform. Wong in the valley. Smith from Heller. Scott at the camera end of a long career, with Messerschmidt lighting Italy as Colorado. A hangar. A Cessna. A farm. An airport that kept a stewardess's jacket. Grief, and pockets of hope. Walk it while the runway is still lit.