The Dog Stars

The trailer for Ridley Scott’s upcoming post-apocalyptic thriller film The Dog Stars makes great use of Van Morrison’s 1970 classic song “Into the Mystic.” The song is in, right from the opening shot, with acoustic guitar creating a tender backdrop as we see Hig (Jacob Elordi) and his wife playing with their dog. The moment ends abruptly at 0:11 with a jump cut to Hig alone in the same room, now with the lights out. The lighthearted guitar is replaced with the echoing sound of distant wind.

Through voiceover we learn that “the world ended” (a devastating flu pandemic) and in the ensuing shots after the studio card we get a glimpse of what that looks like. At 0:24 Hig and his dog are in a football stadium that has become an overgrown field of wildflowers, and the soundtrack is now electronic humming and buzzing.

At 0:41, as we see a list of Ridley Scott’s directing credits, we hear Van Morrison begin the first verse of “Into the Mystic.” Notice that we hear only the vocals from the original recording. Gone are the acoustic guitar, bass and drums that would otherwise accompany Morrison, and instead his voice is drenched in reverb, as though sung in a vast cavern. There’s a 10-second pause in the music, enough time for a few lines of dialogue from Bangley (Josh Brolin), and then we hear Van Morrison sing the second line of the verse.

Even though we’re getting snippets of Van Morrison, the music here is really just textures, no steady pulse, but rather a series of atmospheric tones and rhythms. At 1:00 we hear a low buzzy synthesizer that flows smoothly into the sound of a plane engine at 1:03. In between, we see and hear Bangley fire his shotgun four times, while we hear Van Morrison sing the title hook in the background. The four gun shots cue into a steady pulse that begins at 1:05, with a pounding beat from low drums providing energy during shots of a night attack on our main characters’ camp.

The subsequent shots lead up to the chorus of “Into the Mystic” with full orchestral accompaniment, but the way they get there is worth mentioning. Notice how Bangley’s tapping on the airplane window at 1:17 is synched to the beat of the music. The next three cuts between shots are synched to the beat. Hig takes off in his plane and then at 1:20, we cut to Bangley, with a roaring fire behind him, and the music suddenly stops, leaving sonic space for Van Morrison’s unaccompanied pickup into the chorus, “I don’t have to fear it and I…”.

We’re into the climax of the trailer now, and so we have a rapid-fire montage of many of the most active and exciting shots from the film (stampeding buffalo herds, etc.). We’re hearing Van Morrison sing the chorus while orchestral brass and strings play long sustained chords. It’s big epic orchestral music, without being too rhythmically busy to distract from the action on screen. At the same time we learn from the voiceover that Hig is searching for someone or something, which motivates the action. The pounding drums return, building and building until at 1:56 the music fizzles out, edited to feel a bit like we had been listening to that song on the radio but now we’ve lost reception. The trailer finishes with an epic scene of warriors on horseback attacking Hig’s plane as he attempts to takeoff. Given its presence in the trailer, we get the feeling that the plane will play a central role and indeed, over the final title card at 2:08, we hear Van Morrison sing “as we sailed into the mystic” one final time over a last chord.

This trailer really works musically. Hearing “Into The Mystic” with its normal instrumentation in the opening pre-apocalypse scene sets us up perfectly to make us really appreciate how alone and empty the Van Morrison vocals feel later in the trailer when juxtaposed with eerie electronic textures, tense drumming and then full orchestra. It’s as though Van Morrison’s vocals, like these protagonists, are being forced to adapt to a strange new world. How that world relates to other post-apocalypses like that of The Last of Us remains to be seen and heard in the theatre.

The Dog Stars is in theatres August 28.

— Jack Hui Litster