What happened to the world in The Dog Stars? By 2035 Hig's world is a Colorado airfield with the Reapers outside the fence
Forget the montage of collapsing cities. By the time The Dog Stars starts, the collapse is old news. It's 2035, the dust has settled, and what's left of civilization is a man, a dog, a grump, and a fence.
Welcome to the perimeter
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Hig's entire universe has shrunk to an abandoned airfield in rural Colorado, and his daily routine is bleakly, beautifully simple:
- Fly. Hig patrols the perimeter in his vintage yellow Cessna, dog riding co-pilot
- Watch. Josh Brolin's Bangley mans the guns and greets strangers with ballistics
- Survive the Reapers. The roaming scavengers outside the fence, who have fully embraced the "feral" lifestyle
- Grieve. Hig lost his wife to the flu and processes it by talking to his dog, because therapy is extinct
Then a ghost of a radio transmission crackles through the Cessna, hinting that something — someone — exists beyond the fence line, and Hig does the one thing Bangley would never: he flies toward it.
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About that plane
Book readers, note: in the novel Hig's Cessna is lovingly named "the Beast," and the film quietly dropped it. Ridley Scott owned the change with the confidence of a man who has made forty movies:
"I'll apologize to Peter Heller later."
Ridley. Sir. He's in Denver. He'll take the call.
The world of The Dog Stars isn't ending — it already ended, and the movie is about what you do with the leftovers. Mostly, it turns out, you fly in circles until hope gets loud enough to chase.
Earlier we wrote: This 42-year-old Mexican hidden gem is one of the best supernatural horrors about evil kids
