Ben Affleck's 'Animals' Wants To Get Political but Pulls Its Punches | Review

Image via Netflix Published Oct 8, 2026, 7:00 PM EDT Robert Brian Taylor is a Pittsburgh-based writer, editor, and critic. He is Collider's lead training editor and also contributes as a features editor and staff writer. For the site, he's interviewed a number of actors and filmmakers, including Liam Neeson, J.K. Simmons, Shea Whigham, Miles Teller, Kevin Smith, Alden Ehrenreich, Bruce Campbell, Robert Englund, and RaMell Ross. Throughout his career, his writing has appeared in an eclectic combination of newspapers, magazines, books, and websites. He’s written four 48 Hour Film Project shorts — "Open Mic" (2026), “Hell of a Christmas” (2025), “Clockwork Curse” (2023), and “Uninvited Guests” (2019) — all of which screened theatrically at the local 48 Hour Film Fest. His fiction has been featured at Shotgun Honey, and his short-film script “Dig” was performed live after being named an official selection of the 2017 Carnegie Screenwriters Script and Screen Festival. Sign in to your Collider account Animals, the new Netflix drama starring, directed, and co-written by Ben Affleck, is a film that can never quite settle on what it wants to be. It's got the bones of a thriller, as Affleck plays an L.A. mayoral candidate whose son is kidnapped while out trick-or-treating with a friend. "This is the worst day of your life," the scrambled voice on the other end of the line says when the ransom call comes in. But Affleck resists the urge to turn Animals into a boilerplate kidnapping thriller. A major twist about a third of the way through the film upends standard narrative conventions, and instead attempts to turn it into "big idea" movie that offers up commentary on American politics, the lies spouses tell each other, the plight of undocumented immigrants, and more. The problem is that most of these ideas are half-formed (and occasionally out of touch), and Affleck is unable to weave the movie's various mission statements together in a way that proves satisfying to watch. As a result, Animals isn't thrilling enough to satisfying one type of viewer, nor is it thoughtful enough to serve another. Ultimately, it's tough to imagine anyone reaching the end credits and being enthused about what they just saw. What Is 'Animals' About? In Animals, Affleck plays Mark Kimbell, a former teacher, lawyer, and soldier who is running as an independent in the Los Angeles mayoral race. His long-term aspirations go well beyond local politics, but he first has to win this close election, where current polling has him four points behind. To get over the hump, he's gone behind the back of his wife, Abigail (Kerry Washington), and leveraged most of their financial worth to pay for one final campaign push. Abigail has her own secrets, as she's having an affair with a man named Ron (Ray Fisher) and is contemplating leaving Mark for a new life after the election. As their marriage crumbles, the couple is also busy trying not to rock any boats in the lead up to the election. Though they love their housekeeper Cecilia (Adriana Paz), they carefully explain that they can't hire her new boyfriend, Ramon (Luis Gerardo Méndez), to do work around the house because he's in the country illegally, making the optics look terrible. Still, they agree to let Cecilia take their son, Denny, and Ramon's son, Hector, out to a local Halloween carnival for some trick-or-treating. It's not long after that Mark gets the ominous call that his son has been taken. On the advice of Mark's campaign manager (Steven Yeun, reteaming with Affleck just 10 months after The Rip), the couple reaches out not to Liam Neeson — Animals isn't that kind of movie — but rather to a mysterious fixer/negotiator/financier named Dayle, played by Gillian Anderson, who delivers humdingers like "Leverage is the balance between the allure of incentive and the consequence of refusal" with an ill-advised, vaguely British accent. Dayle is happy to front the Kimbells the $7 million ransom and take point on coordinating the handoff. But she also demands 20 percent — $1.4 million — just for showing up at their house with the cash in tow. The couple feels like they have no choice and bring her on board to get their son back. This is roughly the point when everything goes sideways, and the Kimbells find themselves in a predicament far more complicated than they had originally thought. Lives are in danger, the Kimbells are now in for more money than they can afford, and every decision Mark makes could drastically alter his public image. 'Animals' Wants to Get Political but Pulls Its Punches If you squint, you can see why Affleck wanted to make Animals his sixth feature as a director. It's the kind of mid-budget, high-concept character drama that big Hollywood studios have largely abandoned, and one that Affleck and his buddy Matt Damon (a producer here) want to champion with their Artists Equity production company. It's also the type of pulpy story Affleck gravitates toward. His brilliant first feature, Gone Baby Gone, was also about an abduction, and his Oscar-winning Argo was a thriller that waded into political waters. Those films, along with the excellent 2010 heist picture The Town, felt like they were made by an actor/writer/director who intrinsically understood what makes these types of movies work. Even 2023's Air, Affleck's first directorial effort made primarily for a streamer, seemed very assured in the type of film it needed to be, even if it was a more lightweight affair. So it makes sense that Affleck would want to return to a thornier drama like Animals for his latest directing gig. Unfortunately, the knack for storytelling he'd shown with his earlier films has abandoned him here. In what was clearly an intentional choice, Affleck and his co-writers, Connor O. McIntyre and Billy Ray, decided to keep the focus on the family, with the kidnappers barely even functioning as characters in the story. There are a few small shots from the ringleader's point of view, as well as passing mentions of disillusionment with the American system being the motive. But Animals is certainly not a whodunnit, even if it's sometimes awkwardly structured like one. Meanwhile, the story that interests Affleck is the one where Mark has to juggle what's best for his family with what's best for his campaign, which doesn't always align, especially considering this country's current political climate. If his lies have to pile up to ensure that balance, so be it. The problem there is that Animals is afraid to throw any real punches. Affleck's character running as an Independent makes some amount of sense, being that he's in an L.A. mayoral race against an incumbent. But it's hard not to roll your eyes when, near the end of the film, an undocumented immigrant peacefully turns himself over to ICE so he can be safely transported back to his home country to live happily ever after. Yeah, because that's how things are going in 2026 America. 'Animals' Characters Fail to Garner Much Sympathy Image via Netflix All of this would matter less if Animals filled its story with compelling characters, but the movie fails on that front, too. Affleck is fine-ish in a role that Robert Redford would have crushed three or so decades ago, but he's never really able to sell the supposed intense moral quandaries his character finds himself in. (Seriously, Mark should have just called the cops at about three different points during this movie.) Meanwhile, Washington's beleaguered wife isn't fleshed out enough for the viewer to have a real interest in which guy she ends up with, and the choices she makes in the film's back half seem motivated by the invisible hands of the screenwriters rather than the character. At one point, Mark asks Abigail if her new lover is Black, which again feints toward a more complicated emotional exploration that the movie never bothers to follow up on. Faring worst of all is Anderson, who often comes across like she's playing a character from a different film entirely, one that doesn't have "big idea" aspirations and is free to indulge in its darker genre tendencies. Dayle is ludicrous, which is a problem when the movie around her is desperately trying to tell a grounded story about America's fractured existence. But that's the big problem with Animals — it has too many competing ideas. When you combine that with characters who don't make much of an impact and an over-inflated sense of self-importance, you're left with a film that is going to have a tough time generating anything other than audience apathy. "Humans are animals who tell stories," Dayle says at one point, giving the movie its title. I guess she's right, but you're usually hoping for a story more engrossing than the one Animals decides to tell. Release Date October 9, 2026 Runtime 106 minutes Director Ben Affleck Writers Billy Ray, Ben Affleck, Connor O. McIntyre Producers Ben Affleck, Brad Weston, Collin Creighton, Dani Bernfeld, Matt Damon After their son is abducted, a Los Angeles mayoral candidate and his wife face a desperate race to secure his release. As the crisis deepens, the couple risks losing not only their child, but also their family, ambitions, and future. Pros & Cons If you enjoy Ben Affleck's better, earlier directorial outings, 'Animals' does at least occupy a similar space. 'Animals' can never settle on the right story to tell, pulling back on being a thriller to examine larger cultural issues. The large cast of supporting characters range from undercooked to ridiculous.