Animals (2026, Netflix) - Review

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

BEN Affleck has proven himself to be one of the smartest directors around thanks to the likes of Gone Baby Gone, The Town and the Oscar-winning Argo, so hopes were incredibly high for his latest, the kidnap thriller Animals.

But while all of the ingredients are present for another morally complex, emotionally gripping thriller, they don’t come together to create anything near tasty enough.

The film therefore exists in the shadow of far better child abduction thrillers, most notably Affleck’s own Gone Baby Gone, but also the likes of Ron Howard’s Ransom or Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest (released last year).

As well as directing, Affleck also heads the cast as Mark Kimball, a former lawyer and soldier now running for mayor of Los Angeles as a non-party affiliated independent who promises meaningful change, genuine inclusion and absolute transparency.

But he’s quickly found to be lying to his wife, Abby (Kerry Washington), about having leveraged the family’s savings in order to get him through the home stretch of a close campaign that's being overseen by his political right-hand man Sam (Steven Yeun).

And he also doesn’t know that Abby is having an affair, having come to feel neglected and overlooked in their marriage.

On Halloween night in the run-up to the election, however, the couple get a phone call informing them that their son has been kidnapped and must be exchanged for $7 million before midnight, prompting a race against time to come up with a viable solution (seeing as their funds are currently tied to Mark’s campaign).

So, they call in a mysterious fixer (Gillian Anderson) to oversee the transaction and give themselves more options… only for things to get a little more complicated once it emerges that the kidnappers have taken the wrong child: not the Kimballs’ son but the child of their Mexican housemaid, whose father is an illegal immigrant.

Do they still pay? Or do they now go to the police? Or consider a third, altogether more morally grey option?

Animals is at its best when allowing its characters to debate the various machinations of their predicament - offering the strong cast ample opportunity to visit a range of emotions as they find their values conflicted and their sense of right and wrong put to the test.

It’s when the film also tip-toes into social commentary by exposing some of the absurdities of the US justice system and American views and treatment of things like wealth and immigration.

But having set up so many possibilities, the script then squanders most of them during a dismal third act that asks too much of its audience in terms of suspension of disbelief, while also short-changing several of its characters.

The film also unsuccessfully attempts to serve up a payoff that is, by turns, aiming for clever, hopeful and morally compromised, without really achieving any. Instead, it exposes the film’s flawed writing.

Washington’s Abby is particularly poorly served… her marital concerns basically alleviated by her husband’s sexual prowess in bed (all she needed and wanted was a good f**k, or so the movie implies), while the kidnappers’ motives are never revealed - which again feels like another missed opportunity to add an extra layer of moral complexity.

Equally disappointing is the way that supposedly smart characters also make terrible last act decisions (something that wastes the story arc of the otherwise riveting Anderson character), while other cast members emerge as implausibly heroic. None of it holds up to any real scrutiny.

Such rapid unravelling also defangs any of the film’s bite… the early moral wrangling giving way to fairly contrived plot dynamics befitting thrillers of bygone eras.

It’s a shame given the overall quality of the creative team. Affleck, as mentioned, is no slouch as a filmmaker and keeps the wheels turning in effectively taut fashion… until they come off. And he turns in a decent, if sometimes overly hysterical, performance.

Washington is good value as Abby, Yeun works well as a committed right-hand man who attempts to bring some clarity of thinking, and Anderson is terrifically cold and calculated as the fixer (recalling Jodie Foster’s similarly chilling turn as a similar character in Inside Man).

But that said, Luis Gerardo Mendez and Adriana Paz don’t get much of a voice as the Mexicans, when they should have been given far more to do given how high the stakes are for their family. For a film that displays an admirably diverse cast, it still feels clumsy in its depiction of all of its characters and basically comes down to a male white focus.

The overall result is a film that promises a lot more than it delivers, rendering it a rare misfire from a genuinely talented filmmaker.