One of the biggest Netflix releases of the month, and the one I’ve been looking forward to the most, is the new crime thriller, Animals. Ben Affleck co-wrote and directed the film, in which he also stars. I’ve never been a huge fan of Affleck the actor, but Affleck the director has made some seriously great movies, from his excellent debut film, Gone Baby Gone, to the gripping bank robber drama, The Town, to the Iran hostage crisis picture, Argo, which was based on a true story.
I’m not sure what went wrong between those movies and now, but Animals feels like a film made by a completely different director. The story is all over the place. Almost no time is spent getting to know any of the characters, and I never once found myself liking or caring about any of them.
Not only was there nobody to root for, there was nobody to root against. The film’s bad guys are largely anonymous and generic, and the only time they were even mildly interesting was when they showed up wearing bunny masks, which just reminded me of what a better film The Town was.
The Town
Credit: Warner Bros
Animals Is A Bad Kidnapping Movie
The premise of Animals is very straightforward. Affleck plays aspiring politician Mark Kimball, a Los Angeles mayoral candidate in an election that’s not going his way at all. He’s down in the polls despite his outreach to the Latino vote (he’s fully fluent in Spanish, whereas his Latina opponent only speaks English).
Meanwhile, his wife, Abigail (Kerry Washington), is unhappy in the marriage, and we learn early on that she’s been unfaithful, though we aren’t given enough time with the couple before very bad things start happening to really understand their relationship or empathize with either one of them.
The cast is rounded out by Steven Yeun, who plays Kimball’s campaign manager, and Gillian Anderson, who plays a mysterious fixer named Dayle brought in to help the family when their son is kidnapped and a $7 million ransom is demanded—money that Kimball no longer has, having financed his own run for mayor as an independent.
From the very beginning of the movie to the very end, things move along at such a chaotic and hectic pace that there’s almost no time to ground any of these characters. The few scenes we get between Kimball and his wife are pure melodrama, with some really unfortunate overacting on Affleck’s part.
Washington does a fine job, but her character is dull and preening and feels like the kind of female character a man with previous marriage troubles might concoct. Ironically, Affleck almost cast his real-life ex, Jennifer Garner, in the role (though he also almost cast his longtime collaborator Matt Damon as Kimball). I won’t spoil it, but prepare to roll your eyes at this entire subplot. Affleck has said this movie is as much about marriage as it is about a kidnapping, but it never strikes a coherent balance between the two, and the end product is half-baked and sloppy.
The breakneck pace of the film does not make it exciting. Instead of tension, I just felt tense. I wasn’t worried about the outcome, which felt predictable (and was), or the characters and what would befall them. I just found the style of filmmaking, the constant arguing and shouting, to be very unpleasant. I found myself intensely disliking everyone. Steven Yeun’s talents were utterly wasted here, and Gillian Anderson’s character is a walking stereotype.
The Ending Leaves Some Questions Unanswered
It’s tough to really dig into the flaws of this film without spoilers, so be sure to look for my video, which will be up once the movie goes live on Friday. I’ll talk about the film in more detail with spoilers. The movie could have gone in a more unexpected direction in the end, but it chose a pretty safe path.
Curiously, the film is an unofficial remake – or at least has a strikingly similar plot – to the classic Akira Kurosawa film, High and Low (1963) which Spike Lee just remade in 2025 as Highest 2 Lowest, starring Denzel Washington.
The movie wraps up with something resembling a twist, but not the kind of twist that allows all the pieces to fall elegantly into place. It’s more of a nod to the cynical nature of politics than anything, though I’m not sure it says anything new. Kimball is presented as an idealist at the outset of the film and an opportunist by the end, but that’s not particularly novel for stories about politicians. We’ve seen it many times before. That’s the entire character arc for Tommy Carcetti (Aidan Gillen) in The Wire, and even there it’s nothing new. It’s just incredibly well executed.
Animals is not. Animals is a messy thriller. The writing and dialogue are all over the place, and far too much time is spent with the camera trained on Affleck. The screenplay, which Affleck co-wrote with Billy Ray and Connor O. McIntyre, feels like a rough draft that was hurried into production, and the production itself feels weirdly small and contained, mostly shot in the Kimballs’ home. By the end, I felt no closer to Kimball or any of the other characters. I felt nothing at all.
In a better movie, that sense that we never quite get a bead on Kimball, on who he really is or what he really stands for, might work. In Animals, it just seems as though the movie itself had no idea what to do with its central characters, let alone what it wanted to say about them. Ultimately, this is easily my least favorite of Affleck’s movies, and if I had to choose—stream it or skip it?—I’d give this one a skip.
What To Stream Instead
Go watch Mel Gibson’s Ransom, or the bleak but brilliant Prisoners from director Denis Villeneuve, or even Ben Affleck’s Gone Baby Gone, which is excellent, if you want a good kidnapping movie. Or, if you want to watch something about an election (which this movie is ostensibly also about, even if it barely spends any time on it), watch the 1999 classic Election or the murder mystery series The Killing.
Better yet, go watch Kurosawa’s High and Low. It’s a better film and it’s streaming on HBO Max. That movie is itself a remake of the Ed McBain novel, Ransom.
Animals, alas, is a dud. It is a cinematic travesty. A shocking misfire from a director who certainly knows better.
Score: 3/10 and almost all the points are for one cool “oner” from cinematographer Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood) that you could easily miss if you’re distracted by all the unlikable characters and their distractingly bad dialogue.
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