Ridley Scott is hardly a novice when it comes to depicting determined men (and occasionally women) shouldering various degrees of emotional repression while doing whatever it takes to survive in hostile spaces. Really, take your pick from a career that spans nearly 50 years. More often than not, his films resonate — he’s earned the right to call himself an “influencer,” however ridiculous the quote. But his latest, The Dog Stars, which has seemed to catch the general public flat-footed, is a miss that’s too many steps removed from its emotional center to find any fresh truth in the crowded post-apocalyptic survival genre.

The Dog Stars, based on the 2012 Peter Heller novel, is not necessarily the tense action-thriller about a man (Jacob Elordi), his dog, and the unlikely ratio of hot people fighting to stay alive in a lawless, overgrown dystopia that the trailer makes it out to be. Instead, it’s largely a slow-moving survival story set years after a strange virus decimates society, leaving behind said hot people to grieve while a whole other subset of remaining people seemingly loses their minds, banding together to become violently deranged hordes who live to loot from those who are trying to keep a peaceful existence. Requisite lonesome acoustic guitar soundtrack straight from The Last of Us included, of course, along with a few other baffling country music needle drops.

The first 20 minutes alone are an extended side quest following Elordi’s mechanic Hig and his good boy Jasper on a supply run, loping through an abandoned Denver for Coca Cola products and medical supplies amid unquestionably gorgeous wide shots of the city.

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