All bark, no bite: Ben Affleck's "Animals" stumbles despite an A-list cast

Rating: 2.5 / 5 Stars

Ben Affleck’s return to the director’s chair with the Netflix thriller Animals, now steaming, promises a tense, high-stakes examination of political ambition, wealth, and moral compromise. Wrapped in the glossy sheen of a slick Los Angeles noir, the film boasts a starry ensemble and a ticking-clock premise. Yet, despite its surface-level polish and a few moments of genuine intrigue, the film ultimately reveals itself to be a frustratingly mixed bag. It is a film caught between the prestige drama it wants to be and the convoluted pulp thriller it actually is.

The setup centers on Mark Kimball (Affleck), a wealthy, idealistic mayoral candidate whose campaign is thrown into chaos when a ransom demand arrives for his kidnapped son. However, in a twist of fate, the kidnappers have grabbed the wrong child. Instead of Mark’s boy, they have abducted Hector, the son of the Kimballs' undocumented employee, Ramon (Luis Gerardo Méndez). If this premise sounds incredibly familiar, it is because the script—credited to Affleck, Billy Ray, and Connor O. McIntyre—shamelessly recycles the central narrative engine of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 cinematic masterpiece, High and Low. But where Kurosawa used this mistaken-identity kidnapping to deliver a searing, methodical examination of class inequality and human responsibility, Animals borrows the structural skeleton without adding any fresh insight. It gestures vaguely at modern socio-economic divides in Los Angeles, but ultimately uses the immigrant family’s plight as a mere plot device for the wealthy protagonist's angst.

The tragedy of Animals is that the cast is doing the absolute best they can with the material they have been given. The film is anchored by fine performances that routinely outshine the script. Kerry Washington brings a brittle, nervous energy to her role as Mark's wife, Abigail, conveying a woman fracturing under the weight of hers and her family's secrets. Steven Yeun is characteristically excellent as Sam, Mark's fiercely pragmatic campaign manager who views every tragedy through the lens of voter optics. Meanwhile, Gillian Anderson effortlessly steals the show as Dayle, an icy, ruthless political fixer who arrives in impeccably tailored suits to solve the unsolvable.

Unfortunately, these talented actors are trapped in a script that suffers from agonizingly repetitive dialogue. For a film built around a literal life-or-death ticking clock, the pacing frequently grinds to a halt. Mark, Abigail, and their associates spend long stretches of the second act trapped in rooms, talking in irritated circles. They rehash the exact same debates about campaign finances, poll numbers, and ransom logistics ad nauseam. Rather than deepening the psychological tension, this repetitive, cyclical bickering dilutes the suspense and leaves the middle of the film feeling stagnant.

Any lingering goodwill the movie generates completely evaporates in its final act. Attempting to tie up its sprawling plot points, Animals violently shifts gears and stumbles into a messy, unconvincing climax. The film abandons its ethical inquiries in favour of a chaotic, poorly staged shootout involving double-crosses and sudden sniper fire. It is an abrupt descent into generic action-movie territory that feels entirely unearned and tonally jarring. Instead of a poignant resolution to the profound moral questions raised in the first hour, we get an overly neat, cynical bow tied around the political fallout. Animals isn't an outright disaster, but by borrowing from one of cinema's greatest thrillers and failing to say anything new, it proves that an A-list cast and a stolen premise aren't enough to make a great movie.