Why Ben Affleck’s Animals Will Appeal To Fans Of Gone Girl

Ben Affleck’s New Netflix Thriller Has A Gone Girl Connection That’s Hard To Ignore Published Oct 9, 2026, 7:00 PM EDT Sky Blanton is a Movie Contributor at ScreenRant with professional experience covering movies, television, and pop culture. Her published work spans news, interviews, features, and opinion pieces, with a focus on film, franchise storytelling, and the entertainment industry. She earned her bachelor's degree in Communications with a concentration in Professional Writing and a minor in Business Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. Twelve years after Gone Girl turned Ben Affleck into a husband audiences struggled to trust, Animals puts him at the focus of another family crisis with secrets waiting to come out. Arriving on Netflix on October 9, Ben Affleck and Kerry Washington's new thriller Animals follows Affleck's Mark Kimball, a Los Angeles mayoral candidate whose son is kidnapped. Washington plays his wife, Abigail, as the kidnapping threatens to expose secrets behind their seemingly happy marriage and derail his political career. In David Fincher's Gone Girl, Nick Dunne discovers how quickly being a worried husband can turn into looking like a guilty one. His awkward smile beside a poster of his missing wife becomes ammunition against him, while Gone Girl's twists and revelations about his affair make his appeals for sympathy harder to believe. Affleck makes Nick frustratingly difficult to read, even when he is telling the truth. Even his attempts to explain himself give viewers another reason to wonder what he is hiding. Animals puts Affleck back in the role of a husband with more to hide than he initially lets on. Affleck also directs the film, which follows Mark and Abigail as they scramble to raise their son's ransom and confront secrets that could destroy the life they have built. Mark is running for mayor as a devoted husband and father, but the kidnapping threatens to expose what voters don't know about his marriage. In Gone Girl, Nick learns how damaging that exposure can be when his affair gives the public a reason to suspect him in Amy's disappearance. Ben Affleck's Animals On Netflix Explained Image via Netflix Gillian Anderson’s Dayle makes one of the trailer’s clearest demands. A fixer brought into the crisis, she warns Mark and Abigail that protecting their son requires complete honesty. “Whatever secrets you’ve kept from one another need to come out now,” she tells them. Anderson previously played a detective investigating a serial killer in the British crime drama The Fall, but Dayle is working for the family rather than the police. Her presence introduces someone willing to ask questions the couple would rather avoid. Her priority is getting the information she needs, regardless of what either parent would prefer to keep private. The title Animals makes more sense when Affleck explains how he sees these characters. Speaking to Netflix’s Tudum, he questioned whether people follow a moral compass or just act in their own interests. That suggests the thriller will test the excuses its characters make for their decisions. With a child’s life at stake, almost any action might seem defensible to a desperate parent. The tension comes from how far that justification can stretch before helping someone else becomes protecting yourself. Steven Yeun joined the cast of Ben Affleck's movie, alongside Kerry Washington, while Adriana Paz and Luis Gerardo Méndez also appear in the thriller. The cast spent several weeks rehearsing together before filming. Those rehearsals took place at the Los Angeles house used as the Kimballs’ home, allowing the actors to work through their scenes in the space they would eventually shoot them. (via Netflix Tudum). Gone Girl changes completely when Amy reveals she staged her disappearance. The search for a missing woman becomes a fight between spouses who know how to hurt each other. Amy uses Nick’s affair, spending habits, and carelessness to make him look guilty. Affleck later returned to another troubled marriage in Deep Water, which reverses his Gone Girl role. The trailer for Animals points toward another marriage where solving the immediate crisis requires digging into everything the couple has avoided discussing. Mark and Abigail need to find their son, but their own dishonesty could get in the way. Both stories also give Affleck a public audience to convince. Nick rehearses his television interview with Tanner Bolt, learning how to admit his failures without sounding like a murderer. Mark already spends his campaign asking voters to believe in him. Nick needs the public to believe he loved Amy, while Mark needs voters to trust the family man he presents on the campaign trail. Even after watching Nick rehearse, it’s easy to understand why Gone Girl ranks among Ben Affleck's best movies. He lets enough regret show through during Nick's televised apology to make viewers wonder whether Nick means it or has finally learned what to say. Playing a politician gives Affleck another opportunity to keep audiences guessing. Mark may know how to handle voters, but Animals puts him in conversations where admitting the truth could cost him his wife’s trust.