Review: Familiar to a fault, Ridley Scott's postapocalyptic 'The Dog Stars' finds the genre in need of new tricks

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Set us as preferred Hig (Jacob Elordi) may be the most perfect guy alive, not that he’s got much competition.In Ridley Scott’s simple-minded sociological study “The Dog Stars,” an influenza epidemic wiped out the majority of our squabblesome species sometime during the last decade.

The LCD screens outside the Denver Nuggets basketball arena continue to flicker, although weeds and wolves have overrun the fast-food joints in a bit of postapocalyptic product placement.A former mechanic and construction worker, Hig lives 25 miles north of the city on what appears to be a combination high school football field/rural airport.Periodically, the soft-spoken and generous man flies his Cessna into town to scavenge soda pop for a dozen or so cherubic Mennonite children on a nearby homestead.

Those wholesome visits seem to cheer him up a little, what with the kids’ minder (Benedict Wong) striding around in a straw hat and overalls like something out of Norman Rockwell, and the youngsters thanking Hig with crayoned portraits of his doting German shepard, Jasper.Still, he’s bummed out about his dead wife (Sai Bennett), who, like most dead movie wives, appears in flashbacks as beatific, mute and adoring.The script by Mark L.

Smith (“The Revenant”) wants us to fret that Hig may succumb to suicide but whiffs that idea by trying to get it across in a scene where Hig shuts off the Cessna’s engine mid-flight with Jasper happily riding shotgun.Even if we were willing to accept that Hig might deliberately crash his plane, we’ can’t buy for a second that he’d hurt his sweet pup.

Nevertheless, the film’s dystopian beats are so familiar, you’ve probably guessed by now that you shouldn’t get too attached to the dog.Movies The director of ‘Alien,’ ‘Blade Runner,’ ‘Gladiator’ and the new postapocalyptic ‘The...