by Michael McCarthy
Ben Affleck has directed another winner with Animals, a tense new Netflix thriller in which he also stars and shares a writing credit with Connor O. McIntyre and Billy Ray. From its opening scenes to its final moments, Animals keeps tightening the screws, continually forcing its characters to make decisions where there rarely seems to be a genuinely good option.
Affleck stars as Mark Kimball, an independent candidate for mayor of Los Angeles whose carefully controlled life is thrown into chaos when he and his wife Abigail (Kerry Washington) receive a phone call from someone claiming to have kidnapped their son, Denny. The kidnappers want $7 million, giving Mark and Abigail very little time to come up with an enormous amount of money while also trying to keep the situation from destroying their family and Mark’s political campaign. Netflix describes the film as a thriller about the choices the couple makes while attempting to raise the ransom, and that is really all you should know before watching it.
The less you know about Animals going in, the better. The screenplay throws several major developments at you, and much of the fun comes from having your assumptions repeatedly challenged. More than once I thought I knew where the movie was heading only for it to take a completely different direction.
Affleck is excellent as Mark, a politician who could easily have been written as either an idealistic saint or a cynical opportunist. Instead, he feels much more human than that. Mark seems to genuinely want to help people, but he is also struggling to reconcile his principles with the political calculations required of an independent candidate in a difficult race.
One early scene illustrates that conflict particularly well. Cecilia (Adriana Paz), the Kimballs’ longtime nanny, wants Mark to hire her boyfriend Ramon (Luis Gerardo Méndez) to do work around the house. Mark refuses because Ramon is undocumented and Mark knows that employing him could become a political liability during the campaign. It would be easy to read the decision as coldhearted, but the film never makes Mark quite that simple. He’s navigating the uncomfortable intersection between what he might personally want to do and what he believes he can afford to do as a candidate.
That ambiguity becomes increasingly important once the kidnapping begins. Again and again, you find yourself wondering whether Mark is doing something because it is morally right, because it is politically advantageous or because, under the circumstances, those two motivations have become impossible to separate.
Washington is equally strong as Abigail. She and Affleck convincingly portray a married couple already carrying problems of their own before their lives are turned upside down. Their relationship gives the thriller an emotional center; this isn’t simply a movie about finding $7 million and dealing with criminals. It is also about what happens when an extreme crisis strips away all of the ways people normally present themselves to each other. And it delves into what happens when your biggest secrets come out under pressure.
Gillian Anderson nearly steals the movie as Dayle Burton, a mysterious fixer who enters the picture when the Kimballs need a solution that the police and conventional channels may not be able to provide. Anderson plays her with an almost unnerving calm. Dayle is cool, pragmatic and seemingly impossible to rattle, even when everyone around her is falling apart. Netflix describes her as someone capable of operating both within and outside the system, which is a pretty good indication of the kind of presence she brings to the story.
Steven Yeun is also terrific as Sam, Mark’s trusted campaign aide. He clearly believes in Mark and desperately wants him to win, but there is something calculating about him as well. At one point, I became convinced that Sam might somehow be involved in what was happening. I won’t tell you whether I was right or wrong, but the fact that the movie had me entertaining possibilities like that is part of what makes it so effective. Yeun keeps Sam just difficult enough to read that you never feel entirely certain what he might be capable of. Netflix itself describes Sam as devoted to getting Mark elected “at all costs.”
Affleck handles the escalating tension extremely well. Animals runs about an hour and 46 minutes, but it moves quickly because the screenplay is constantly giving its characters another problem to solve or another moral line to consider crossing. The script by McIntyre, Billy Ray and Affleck is compelling from start to finish, and Affleck proves once again that he is just as interesting behind the camera as he is in front of it.
My biggest complaint is that the film left me wanting considerably more information about the kidnappers themselves. There are hints that the person behind the scheme may have some sort of history with Mark, including a remark suggesting that Mark somehow wronged him in the past, but the film never explores that connection as thoroughly as I would have liked. Considering how carefully developed most of the other characters and motivations are, that absence feels particularly noticeable. I kept expecting one final revelation explaining exactly why Mark had been targeted.
Still, that frustration didn’t diminish the effectiveness of the movie for me. Animals works both as a suspense thriller and as a story about how quickly morality becomes complicated when money, family, ambition and public image all collide. The movie continually asks whether someone can do the right thing for the wrong reason or the wrong thing while convincing themselves that they are doing it for the right one.
Most importantly, it kept me guessing. If you like thrillers where seemingly straightforward situations become increasingly complicated and nobody’s motivations are entirely clean, Animals is well worth watching.
I don’t normally give letter grades but if I had to assign one to Animals, it would be a solid A.
Animals is now streaming on Netflix.
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