As expected, polite society and the modern world ends more in a whimper then a dramatic flourish.

In theatres tomorrow, The Dog Stars from director Ridley Scott takes us into a dystopian future that’s more about that loss of human connection between the people that are left then it is about the spectacle of a world ravaged by a mysterious illness.

In a post-apocalyptic world, a virus wipes out humanity. Survivors face roaming scavengers called Reapers. Hig (Jacob Elordi) a pilot, survived the flu but lost his wife is yearning for something a little more than just survival.

At its core, there’s an interesting story here in The Dog Stars about people hitting that breaking point beyond survival  and needing those things that make us human but it plays so quietly that it almost feels out of place as big budget thriller shot for large format screens.

In many ways on this one, the money when into the visual esthetic of the film which plays an important, yet admittedly overblown role in the movie because while it all looks really REALLY good, they could have likely kept the cost down not giving us so many majestic shots of the country side while our hero navigates it all in his Cessna airplane.

Thematically it says some important things about the darker elements of human nature but the script kept it a little too obscure simply making the films “antagonist’ these faceless roaming hoards for most of the movie, until the final act of the film where it feels the true face of the worst parts of human nature is comedically borrowed from a film that was worked on by Terry Gilliam and Eli Roth in a very gloomy pairing for what this worlds truly dystopian vision is supposed to look like.

I guess there are advantages to being Ridley Scott, because he got to pour approx. $110 Million into a movie that most other directors wouldn’t have gotten $40 Million to make.  This was likely all shot practically in nature and it certainly added to the scope and the emotional nature of these people feeling lost in the abyss simply trying to survive, but it just didn’t need this much ‘scope’.

It’s all very well done and we’re invested in the characters along with some strong performances but they almost all get lost in the literal size of this film.

Coming off of his humanistic portrayal of Frankenstein’s monster in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, Jacob Elordi proves he’s got the chops to be a leading man.  As Hig, he’s got leading man swagger but also conveys genuine character driven pathos as a broken man looking to move on in a world that has fallen apart around him.

Apart from him, Josh Brolin is his usual gruff charming self as the charismatic survivalist who is content in his routine but the other “normal” survivors in Margret Qualley (who was just straight up miscast) and Guy Pearce playing angry old rural guy in a fashion that felt a little too cookie cutter.  Benedict Wong as a local Mormon (sorry Mennonite) and Alison Janney don’t get much run way to do anything really of note as they round out the cast.

When it comes down to it, The Dog Stars felt like a solid human drama about our collective need for connection that was struggling to keep getting noticed in a very large, often beautiful dystopian tale of the human condition.

It’s hardly a bad film, but it’s also a clear cut example of how sometimes less can be more.  The Dog Stars tries to be “epic” but has to settle for being more emotionally resonant than anything else.   That’s not a good thing or a bad thing….but it is a thing.