Animals review: Ben Affleck's Netflix thriller is richly rewarding and suspenseful

Politics can be a dirty business, where even the most clean-cut, well-intentioned players can find themselves walking the dark side of the street, their core values and moral backbone tested to the limit.

Such is the conundrum Ben Affleck contends with in a gripping drama that plays out like a typical crime thriller before wrongfooting viewers and pivoting to a more layered and intriguing study of right-and-wrong, of difficult decisions no one should ever have to face.

Affleck is Mark Kimball, a lawyer and Gulf War veteran standing for mayor of Los Angeles; a man of the people with a voter-friendly Black wife (Kerry Washington) wooing a multi-cultural electorate but behind in the polls to a female Latina candidate.

Elections are expensive, and – as an independent without major party backing – Mark has borrowed heavily to finance his run, circumstances of which only he and his trusty campaign manager and right-hand man Sam (Steven Yeun) are aware.

Hours before he is due to speak at an important, make-or-break rally, a phone call telling him his young son has been kidnapped turns his world upside down; the gargantuan ransom demand of $7 million prompts Sam to suggest they enlist the services of a “broker”.

Enter Dayle (Gillian Anderson), an ice-cool mystery woman able to acquire the money immediately, for an eye-watering fee, and advising the Kimballs through every step of the cat-and-mouse negotiations with their boy’s captors.

The proviso, she tells them, is that they must be entirely honest with her at all times; is there anything in their lives that’s feasibly made them specific targets; do they have any secrets they’re keeping from the world, or each other?

As tension mounts and nerves become increasingly frayed, a surprise turn of events alters the playing field and, crucially, the pragmatic Dayle’s counsel, forcing Mark to reappraise the situation before making his next move, to secure both his family’s safety and his political future.

That game-changing twist arrives relatively early in the narrative, a little more than half an hour into the running time, its impact on the rest of the film and the motives of its characters key to what makes Animals so compelling and less run-of-the-mill than it might have first presented itself.

In addition to his terrific work as lead actor, Affleck’s contributions as both director and co-writer echo with the “big question” elements he so stylishly brought to earlier triumphs The Town, Argo and, especially, Gone Baby Gone.

Here he confidently guides viewers through a minefield of scenarios that touch on race, ambition, power, loyalty and human vulnerability, while tacitly asking his audience what would you do in Mark’s shoes?

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It’s a bravura performance as a politician used to being in control, flaws exposed when he no longer is, backed up by the subtlety of Washington as a wife already pained by an entirely separate emotional turmoil of her own.

Yeun (who co-starred with Affleck earlier in 2026 in siege thriller The Rip) may have less to do, but there are nonetheless depths to the cocksure wheeler-dealer political operative and his clandestine links to shadowy fixers whose skill set blurs the lines between what is and isn’t legal.

Speaking of whom, Anderson effortlessly draws the eye as the no-nonsense Dayle, gracefully dressed all in white while dispensing hard truths about the consequences of the Kimballs’ subsequent tough-choice options beyond the safe return of a hostage child; she brings a fascinating chill to a character who seemingly could be either hero or villain.

Although audaciously plotted, the story risks becoming too frantic in its final third, but not until we’re already hooked by what’s gone before and prepared to forgive a minor misstep or two; a small price to pay for such richly rewarding and suspenseful filmmaking.

Animals is now streaming on Netflix. You can sign up to Netflix from £7.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky TV and Virgin Media.

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