‘Animals’ Review: A Kidnapping Thriller That Can’t Decide Who the Real Predator Is
Ben Affleck is back in the director’s chair with ‘Animals‘, a Netflix kidnapping thriller that arrives today on the platform and in select theaters. It is his first time directing since ‘Air’ in 2023, and he also stars and shares a writing credit with Connor O. McIntyre and Billy Ray. Matt Damon and Affleck’s Artists Equity banner produced it, so the expectations around this one were never small.
Affleck plays Mark Kimball, a Los Angeles mayoral candidate trailing in the polls who has quietly sunk the family’s savings into his campaign. His wife Abigail, played by Kerry Washington, is already resentful when their son Denny is taken on Halloween night. The kidnappers want seven million dollars, money Mark does not have and cannot admit he has lost.
The first stretch is where ‘Animals’ works best, because a parent scrambling for cash while hiding the truth makes for real pressure. The trouble is that the film soon wants to be a marriage drama, a kidnapping thriller, a political story and a statement on race and class all at once. It never commits to one tone, and the tension keeps leaking out through the gaps.
Steven Yeun’s campaign manager Sam offers a way out in the form of a fixer, played by Gillian Anderson, who can raise the cash fast but only with a heavy price and no police involved. Anderson is easily the most watchable presence on screen, cold and a little theatrical in a way that suits the material. Yeun is the steadier voice in the room, and the two of them make the scenes around the money feel more dangerous than anything else in the movie.
Affleck gives Mark a bruised, humiliated edge that is genuinely interesting at first. Too often, though, he and Washington are handed screaming matches that tip into melodrama and pull you away from the danger the child is in. Washington is asked to hit the same hysterical note repeatedly, and Adriana Paz and Luis Gerardo Méndez, as the household staff, are given very little to play.
The look of the film is the other letdown. ‘Gone Baby Gone’ and ‘The Town’ were rooted in specific streets and specific people, while this version of Los Angeles feels glossy, polished and strangely anonymous. The political angle is timid when it should bite, a few plot choices strain belief, and the ending is so tidy that it lets nearly everyone slip away from the consequences the story spent an hour building.
Still, I never reached for my phone, and that counts for something. The pace is quick, the cast is stacked, and the setup is strong enough that I kept wanting the script to be braver than it was. It is an entertaining one time watch that falls well short of the sharp, nasty thriller its premise promises, and I land on 5.5 out of 10.
How did you like 'Animals'?
Did Affleck’s kidnapping thriller keep you hooked or lose you somewhere in the second half, and do you agree with my verdict on ‘Animals’? Tell me in the comments.
