Animals Review: Ben Affleck and Kerry Washington Deserve a Better Netflix Thriller
SPOILER WARNING: This review contains major spoilers for Netflix's Animals.
Netflix's Animals had all the ingredients for a gripping political thriller. Ben Affleck and Kerry Washington leading the cast? Check. A kidnapping involving a political family? Check. Gillian Anderson playing a mysterious fixer, with Steven Yeun thrown into the mix as a shady campaign manager? Sign me up. Unfortunately, somewhere between its promising setup and increasingly ridiculous conclusion, Animals loses control of its own story.
Directed and co-written by Affleck, the film follows Los Angeles mayoral candidate Mark Kimball (Affleck) and his wife Abigail (Washington), whose carefully constructed lives begin unraveling when their family becomes the target of a kidnapping. It's hardly a revolutionary premise. We've seen plenty of ransom thrillers involving wealthy families, powerful politicians, and desperate parents. However, putting Affleck and Washington together offered the possibility of something fresh, particularly with the political intrigue surrounding their characters.
And for a while, I was completely on board. The story had my attention, the cast was delivering, and there were enough secrets lurking beneath this seemingly perfect marriage to keep things interesting. Then the movie decided that having a good premise wasn't enough and started throwing practically everything at the wall.
Ben Affleck and Kerry Washington Have the Star Power, but What About the Chemistry?
One of the biggest draws of Animals was seeing Affleck and Washington share the screen. Washington has been on quite a run, and the prospect of watching these two navigate a marriage falling apart while dealing with a kidnapping sounded like the perfect recipe for some explosive performances.
The chemistry, however, is just okay. That's not to say either actor gives a bad performance, because they don't. Washington brings the emotional intensity we've come to expect from her, while Affleck convincingly portrays a politician whose carefully managed public image is one bad decision away from collapsing. Still, there's no undeniable spark between them, and considering how much of the movie depends on their relationship, that missing electricity becomes noticeable.
It also doesn't help that Mark and Abigail have enough marital problems to fill an entire season of television. Abigail is having an affair, while Mark has secretly drained their finances to fund his political campaign. Apparently, honesty wasn't included in their wedding vows. When those secrets inevitably surface, the film has an opportunity to really explore the damage done to their relationship, but the emotional fallout never feels quite as substantial as it should.
What should have been a fascinating examination of a marriage built on secrets instead becomes another complication in an already overcrowded story.
Gillian Anderson Brings the Fixer Energy, and the Scandal Connection Is Impossible to Ignore
One of my favorite elements of the film is the inclusion of Gillian Anderson as Dayle Burton, a woman brought in to help manage the family's increasingly dangerous situation. Anderson arrives with a British accent and the kind of commanding presence that immediately suggests she knows where every political body is buried.
And can we talk about the irony of Kerry Washington being involved in a political scandal and needing someone else to come in and fix it? Anyone who watched Washington as Olivia Pope on Scandal knows exactly why that casting dynamic is so amusing. Olivia Pope practically invented the art of cleaning up Washington's political messes, and now Washington is playing the wife of a political candidate who desperately needs a fixer of her own.
Ding, ding! I see what we're doing here, and I appreciate it. Steven Yeun, meanwhile, adds another layer of suspicion as the campaign manager. His character is the kind of political operative who makes you wonder whether he's working to protect his candidate or simply protect himself. Between Anderson's calculated presence and Yeun's questionable loyalties, the supporting cast gives the story some additional intrigue.
Unfortunately, intriguing characters can only do so much when the narrative around them starts losing focus.
The Kidnapping Twist Is Where Animals Starts Losing Its Momentum
Here's where Animals really began losing me.
The film's major revelation is that the kidnappers have taken the wrong child. Rather than kidnapping Mark and Abigail's son, they've abducted Hector, the son of Ramon, an undocumented immigrant connected to the household. Suddenly, what initially appeared to be a fairly conventional ransom thriller becomes a story about immigration, class, privilege, and whose children are considered worth saving.
There's a meaningful idea buried in that twist. Setting the story in Los Angeles, a city where immigrant communities are deeply woven into everyday life, creates an opportunity to examine the enormous differences between how powerful political families and undocumented workers experience a crisis. It also raises an uncomfortable question: Would Mark be willing to take the same risks for someone else's child that he would for his own?
That could have been the movie's strongest element. Instead, the message gets muddled as the story struggles to balance its social commentary with the kidnapping plot, Mark's political ambitions, his marriage, and the increasingly questionable decisions being made by practically everyone involved.
I understood what the film was trying to say, but understanding the message and feeling that it was successfully delivered are two different things. The middle portion loses the momentum established earlier, and rather than building toward a compelling resolution, Animals starts feeling like several different movies competing for attention.
An Over-the-Top Finale Makes Everything Even Messier
By the time Animals reaches its final act, subtlety has pretty much left the building.
There are snipers, an attempt to eliminate the kidnappers, an increasingly chaotic confrontation, and the death of Anderson's character. Ramon ultimately steps up to save his son and Mark, proving to be one of the few people caught up in this nightmare whose actions feel driven by something other than political self-preservation.
And then comes the cover-up. Rather than allowing the fallout from everything that's happened to play out honestly, the surviving characters find a way to manipulate the narrative. The truth gets buried, the public receives a carefully manufactured version of events, and the people with power once again manage to escape meaningful consequences.
Mark ultimately wins the mayoral election, and the film even hints that his political ambitions could extend much further. After everything we've watched him do, the prospect of an even bigger political future is certainly meant to leave audiences thinking about the relationship between corruption and power.
I understand the cynical point the film is making. Politicians manipulate public perception, powerful people protect their own interests, and the truth doesn't always matter when someone can control the story. None of that is particularly shocking, and perhaps that's the problem. The ending seems more concerned with delivering that final statement than providing a satisfying payoff to everything that came before it.
Even Mark and Abigail's relationship gets an oddly convenient resolution. After the cheating, deception, missing money, and emotional turmoil, they somehow decide to remain together. I wasn't expecting a fairy-tale ending, but I did expect a little more emotional weight behind that decision.
Instead, everything gets wrapped up in a way that feels simultaneously overcomplicated and strangely easy. After all that chaos, the movie practically shrugs and moves on.
Final Verdict: Animals Had the Right Ingredients but Couldn't Make Them Work
What makes Animals so disappointing isn't that it's a terrible movie. It's that there's a much better movie hiding somewhere inside it.
Affleck and Washington were enough to get me interested, and the supporting cast only added to that excitement. The political setting, marital secrets, kidnapping, and underlying commentary about immigration and privilege gave the film several potentially fascinating directions to explore. For its opening stretch, I was genuinely invested in seeing how everything would unfold.
Unfortunately, Animals never figures out how to make all those ideas work together. The central twist changes the film's direction without fully strengthening its message, the marriage drama never reaches the emotional intensity it deserves, and the finale becomes an unnecessarily elaborate exercise in political corruption.
Affleck and Washington are perfectly watchable together, and Anderson is a welcome addition, but their collective talent isn't enough to rescue a story that becomes increasingly unfocused. What starts as a promising thriller eventually collapses under the weight of its own ambitions.
My Grade: C
Animals isn't without its entertaining moments, and there's enough here to make it worth considering for fans of political thrillers. Just don't be surprised if you finish watching and find yourself wondering how a movie with this much talent managed to deliver such an unsatisfying ending.
Animals is now streaming on Netflix.
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