Hig pilots his small, vintage plane up into the Colorado mountains, cuts the engine, and glides. Surrounded by endless sky and soft green forest, there’s a look of uneasy peace on the young man’s face. Serenity, grief, and a glimmer of a death wish swirl together against the canvas of Jacob Elordi’s perpetual 5 o'clock shadow as he soars silently through the air, waiting until the last possible minute to restart the engine and fly back home.

Quiet, contemplative moments like these keep The Dog Stars grounded and accessible throughout its sprawling post-apocalyptic story — even as director Ridley Scott piles on epic action set pieces and surreal, surprising sequences that sometimes push the film from prestige drama into absurdist spectacle.

In The Dog Stars, based on the 2012 book of the same name by Peter Heller and adapted by screenwriter Mark L. Smith (The Revenant), Elordi’s Hig is one of the few remaining survivors on Earth, years after a deadly virus swept the planet. He lives on an old airfield with a former marine named Bangley (Josh Brolin). All things considered, they have a pretty good life — plenty of whiskey, cigarettes, bullets, and the safety of a secure perimeter — but Hig wants something more.

He's obsessed with a faint radio message seemingly broadcast from a town called Grand Junction that he can only hear while flying up in the mountains. But Grand Junction is too far away to fly there and back on a single tank of gas, so he never makes the trip.

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