I went to see “The Dog Stars” at the Flourtown Movie Tavern. Going to the movies used to be a real treat, as well as a linchpin activity in securing my now wife. So, when we realized we hadn’t been in more than a year, Tuesday movie night sounded good. We settled on Ridley Scott’s “The Dog Stars,” a post-apocalyptic drama based on Peter Heller’s 2012 novel.

We’re introduced to Hig, played by Jacob Elordi. A flu pandemic has wiped out most of humanity, and Hig is now a widowed mechanic and pilot living at a fortified Colorado airfield with Bangley, a heavily armed survivalist played by Josh Brolin.

In the first 15 minutes, Hig flies a yellow Cessna, considers crashing it, commands his perfectly trained dog, Jasper, delivers Sprite to Mennonite children, handles a pistol, fly-fishes and cooks his catch as if it were being photographed for Bon Appétit, all while wearing a distractingly great gorpcore wardrobe sponsored by Carhartt. None of this seems to exist anywhere in Elordi’s muscle memory. But damn, he looks good doing it.

Pretty incredible so far.

Against all odds, the apocalypse has been rather good to Hig and Bangley. They have the following: electricity, unlimited ammunition, bourbon, coffee, plenty of food, gasoline for the Cessna and a well-stocked fishing pond. It is an embarrassingly luxurious setup for the end of civilization. Their hangar is all tasteful midcentury modern with a hint of everyman garage, basically how I’d like my basement to look.

Outside are roaming killers. A tattooed group attacks the compound.

Hig leaves in search of the source of a faint radio transmission and, presumably, greener pastures.

This is supposed to be Colorado. Most of the movie was filmed in Italy. I’ve been to the Rockies. These weren’t them.

When the Cessna malfunctions, Hig doesn’t crash. He sets it down perfectly in a mountain valley.

Nice.

He follows a donkey, military rifle slung over his shoulder, to a farm occupied by Guy Pearce and Margaret Qualley. They introduce themselves as Pops and Cima. I heard “Zima” and nearly spit out my sparkling water at the thought that Margaret Qualley was playing a woman named after a late-’90s wine cooler.

Pops gets the jump on Hig, then lets him live. He also overlooks the doe-eyed laser beams Hig immediately starts shooting at Cima. The real coffee and cigarettes probably help.

Yikes.

Until this point, “The Dog Stars” is mostly laughably bad, beautifully photographed, survival cosplay. Then the depiction of human danger turns grossly offensive.

Another group of attackers rides in on horseback with face paint, spears and feathers, chanting and yelling. The film never calls them Native American, but it codes them with imagery lifted directly from old Hollywood’s racist depictions of Indigenous people, the faceless “savage” villains of John Wayne-era Hollywood, brought back to threaten the white homestead. Those tropes were lazy and misguided in the 1960s. In 2026, they are downright toxic.

Hig, Pops and Cima escape and fly to the mythical Grand Junction, the place where perhaps everyone is normal. Instead, they find a group of well-spoken, affluent white people who immediately ply them with liquor and then turn evil.

They were also cannibals.

Maybe the movie thinks this evens things out: Look, white people can be cannibals too. It doesn’t. The Grand Junction cannibals are allowed to be people. They have names, dialogue, nice clothes, cocktails and a society. The attackers of color are just tattoos, face paint and noise. They are stripped of their humanity before the heroes start shooting.

In the end, Hig and Cima return to the airfield. Bangley has somehow fended off the tattooed killers on his own, Cima starts tending to the Mennonite children, and everyone gathers for a big meal beneath the Dog Stars. More or less happily ever after.

There is a fantasy that the end of the world would bring about a singleness of purpose: Keeping my family fed and safe becomes the only daily objective. Men who know how to fish, handle firearms, fix engines and fly planes become the leaders and protectors. I get the appeal. In that world, competence is easy to recognize. You know what you are supposed to do, and whether you did it.

If “The Dog Stars” had only served up that fantasy, I could have tolerated it and enjoyed Tuesday night with my wife. Instead, the movie uses ugly stereotypes and places the evil side of humanity inside familiar racial caricatures. It is a hollow story fronted by a Gen Z dreamboat with none of the comfort or muscle memory of an everyman mechanic, set in fake Rocky Mountains.

The movie imagines an apocalypse where humanity has learned nothing and continues to behave as foolishly and selfishly as ever. Fair enough. But “The Dog Stars” doesn’t seem to have learned much, either.

Elordi sure did look good in Carhartt, though.

Sam Beckett is a Chestnut Hill resident.