For those who care about the man, the legend that is Ridley Scott (director of two of the greatest films of all time, Blade Runner and Alien, not forgetting the not-half-bad Gladiator), there was an unspoken collective “phewwww…” at last week’s world premiere for The Dog Stars. Because after the woeful (in varying degrees) House of Gucci, Napoleon and Gladiator II, here’s something, well, not half bad.

Don’t start salivating like Pavlov’s dogs just yet though, because this ain’t half brilliant either. Based on Peter Heller’s 2012 novel (which is presumably more fully-formed than this), it’s a folksy, rambling trundle through a backwoods post-apocalypse. Like all Scott movies, it’s a well-stacked cast, perhaps even juicier than usual with zeitgeisty lust-throbs Jacob Elordi and Margaret Qualley joined by the always rock-solid, Hollywood battle-hardened old hands, Josh Brolin and Guy Pearce.

It’s 10 years after a virus wiped out most of the planet and Elordi’s softly grieving widower Hig is hunkered up at an old mountain airfield outside Denver with Brolin’s heavy-weapon-toting Bangley, a man who loves nothing more than mowing down intruders to make a kerosene-fuelled bonfire of their corpses.

In between the short, sharp jolts of violence, there are flickers of homely humour, like when Hig and Bangley are blithely playing cards with mountains of dollar bills on the table (money being a redundant currency after the total collapse of the world order).

Hig makes regular light aircraft recon trips with his Belgian Malinois Jasper (of course, there had to be an actual dog star), sometimes stopping off at a Mennonite community led by Benedict Wong’s Aaron. It’s quite something to recall that Wong began his ascent to Hollywood stalwart by playing Sean Lock’s idiotically naïve flatmate in the sardonic BBC sitcom 15 Storeys High.

On one of his supply flights, circumstances force Hig to crash land into the world of Pops (Pearce) and his daughter Cima (Qualley). You, Hig and Pops will see Qualley bend over to reveal a particularly eye-catching ass (not the most subtle piece of film-making). However, between Hig and Cima is the fearsome Pops…

When further “circumstances” derail their existence, the trio (with Bangley ploughing his own bloody furrow in the background) head off on a thinly fleshed-out adventure that’s paced like a pensioner who wants to sprint a park run but needs to keep stopping for breath.

It’s all quick, quick, slow, without ever quite demanding your full attention. And the deeper human stories, such as the odd couple friendship between Bangley’s brutal survivalist and Hig’s peace-seeker, are only skimmed across.

What lifts this are the wildly weird scenes where wrong’uns (we’re talking frenetic homicidalists that would give the zombies in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later a run for their money) burst into Hig and Co’s lives — Allison Janney’s toe-curling air hostess and her excessively flaming martini is worthy of David Lynch.

Let’s not dwell on the ending, but suffice to say there was another collective audience emission, but this time audible groans of disbelieving laughter (expect to be somewhat riled).

So not quite a return to form, but for Scott, now 88, this strange flight of apocalyptic fancy proves there’s plenty of bite in the old dog yet.

In cinemas from August 26