Ben Affleck Wants You To Argue About His New Netflix Thriller ‘Animals’
Tania Hussain is an Executive Editor at Collider responsible for creative, editorial, and managerial duties. In addition to leading content ideation and development, she works to generate innovative and compelling ideas for feature articles and reviews with her editorial team across Features, Lists, Reviews, and Interviews. She also serves as the primary editor overseeing Collider’s Signature Series profiles, spotlighting some of the most influential voices in film and television. Tania has helped cover and ideate content for major events for Collider, including the Toronto International Film Festival. She has also conducted more than 100 interviews since her start in the business more than 15 years ago. Some favorites include Joel McHale, Charlie Cox, Jennifer Garner, Tina Fey, Kate Winslet, Bob Odenkirk, Andy Richter, Jordan Schlansky, Jamie Dornan, Yeardley Smith, Rafe Spall, Esther Smith, and a reasonable toss-up between Cookie Monster and Kermit the Frog. She has covered set visits, in-person junkets, and red carpets for several films and TV shows, including most recently, The Sheep Detectives, Masterchef, and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.
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Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for ‘Animals’
Summary
- In an interview with Collider, Ben Affleck says he hopes Animals sparks debate about its characters, their choices, and whether its central marriage is healthy.
- Kerry Washington explains how money, dishonesty, and personal pressures can complicate good intentions in politics.
- Adriana Paz and Luis Gerardo Méndez discuss how Cecilia and Ramon face the biggest risks with the least protection from those in power.
Ben Affleck knows that audiences can handle thrillers without clear heroes or easy answers. But with his new Netflix movie Animals out now, the Academy Award winner wants viewers to argue about the people you see on screen, including the politician he plays. “You don’t have to make movies predictable, dumb, obvious, or have nakedly explicit thematic resolutions in order to attract a broad audience,” he tells Collider ahead of the film’s October 9 release.
Of course, that kind of discourse leaves plenty of room to talk about how money and power help decide who gets protection in today’s world. In his sixth directorial feature alongside Kerry Washington as his wife Abigail, Affleck stars as Los Angeles mayoral candidate Mark Kimball, whose son Denny (Christopher Woodley) is kidnapped. As the couple scrambles to raise the ransom with the help of mysterious power broker Dayle (Gillian Anderson), their choices soon pull others into the crisis while inadvertently putting their own secrets at risk.
In addition to directing and producing (alongside Matt Damon), Affleck co-wrote the highly anticipated Animals with Billy Ray (Richard Jewell) and Connor O. McIntyre for his production company, Artists Equity. Speaking with Collider, Affleck, Washington, Steven Yeun, Adriana Paz, and Luis Gerardo Méndez break down the film’s biggest questions about trust, politics, and whose lives matter when powerful people have something to lose.
Ben Affleck Wants ‘Animals’ to Leave Room for Disagreement
Affleck and Washington explore the gap between good intentions and political choices in Animals.
In the 106-minute thriller, Affleck’s character Mark is running for mayor on the promise to help people. He presents himself as a regular Jefferson Smith from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington — a goodhearted candidate who wants to make a difference. But when his son is kidnapped, his focus turns to protecting his own home. For Washington, that’s where the film gets into the pressures that can complicate even good intentions.
“I think the film really speaks to how complicated politics can be and how you can sometimes really want to do the right thing, whatever that means to you, but that there are so many forces at play, economic forces, internal forces of psychology that can get in the way, your people-pleasing, your dishonesty,” she says.
Washington admits she sees that struggle in Yeun’s character, Sam, the campaign manager who is trying his hardest to keep Mark’s bid for mayor alive amid the chaos. While his advice can sound cold, she believes there’s more behind it. “He comes across to me initially as a more cynical character who’s a bit more jaded, but what you realize is how much he really does want to make a difference, and so he’s trying to play the game in a way where change can really happen,” she says. “I guess Mark is kind of trying to do the same thing [laughs]. I just don’t love that he lies to his wife about it.”
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Netflix Character Would Be Your Best Friend? Dustin · Emily · Wednesday · Gi-hun
Some friends drag you out of the house. Some sit with you on the worst night of your life. Netflix has written both, plus the one who tells you the truth you have been avoiding all week. Answer eight quick questions about how you actually do friendship, and find out which of them was always going to end up in your corner.
🧢Dustin(Stranger Things)
🗼Emily(Emily in Paris)
🕷️Wednesday(Wednesday)
🟢Gi-hun(Squid Game)
01
How do you usually end up making a new friend? The origin story says a lot about the friendship that follows it.
02
What is a perfect Saturday with your best friend? Friendship is mostly built out of very ordinary hours.
03
You call them at two in the morning. What happens? This is the real test of a friendship, and everybody knows it.
04
What do you want from them when you are clearly wrong? The best friendships are the ones that survive being corrected.
05
What do your friends actually value about you? The friend you attract says something about the friend you are.
06
You have a falling out. How does it go? How a friendship repairs itself matters more than how it breaks.
07
What do you actually need a best friend for? Everybody is missing something. The right friend fills that gap.
08
Ten years from now, what keeps the two of you close? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides who you get.
The Group Chat Has Spoken Your Best Friend Is…
Four Netflix characters, four completely different ways of showing up for somebody. This is the one who fits how you actually do friendship, and what having them in your life would be like.
Dustin Henderson
You do not do friendship at half volume, and neither does he. What you want is somebody who says yes to the plan before you have finished describing the plan.
- Dustin is the friend the entire show runs on: loyal past the point of sense, enthusiastic about everything, and incapable of leaving anybody behind.
- You have the same instinct. Your friendships are loud, specific and slightly ridiculous, and they last for decades because of it.
- He is also the one person who would take your strangest interest completely seriously, which is far rarer than it sounds.
- You would have a group chat. It would never once be quiet.
Emily Cooper
You are the friend who makes things happen, and so is she. Together you would be mildly exhausting to everyone around you and completely delighted with yourselves.
- Emily treats an ordinary Tuesday as something that could be turned into an occasion, which is either the best or the worst quality in a friend depending on your energy levels.
- You share her refusal to sit still. Neither of you has ever accepted a night in when something was happening somewhere else.
- She is far more loyal than people give her credit for. She defends her friends loudly, publicly, and occasionally before checking the facts.
- She would post the photo without asking. You would forgive her, because it is a very good photo.
Wednesday Addams
You have no patience for pleasant lies, and she has no ability to tell them. What looks like coldness from the outside is the most reliable friendship on this list.
- Wednesday never says a kind thing she does not mean, which makes the rare ones count for an enormous amount.
- You would rather be told the truth than be made comfortable. She is constitutionally incapable of offering you anything else.
- Underneath all of it she is ferociously protective. She simply refuses to make a performance out of caring.
- Do not expect a birthday message. Do expect her to ruin anyone who wrongs you.
Seong Gi-hun
You look after whoever is having the worst day. So does he. It is the least strategic way to move through the world and the best possible quality in a friend.
- Gi-hun is not the strongest player in Squid Game, or the cleverest. He is the one who keeps choosing to protect somebody else, over and over, at genuine cost to himself.
- You have the same instinct. You notice who is struggling and you stay with them, long after anybody would blame you for leaving.
- He is a flawed friend, and that is part of why it lands. He lets people down, then comes back and tries again, which is more than most manage.
- He would give you his last chance and never once mention that he had done it.
“Listen, you gotta do what you gotta do,” Affleck jokingly interjects. As Mark’s marriage gives those choices a personal cost, the actor hopes viewers won’t all take the same side. “Two people might see it and vehemently disagree about certain characters or whether or not this marriage is healthy or whether or not that was a fair choice. I would love that to come out of this movie, and for people to have very strong opinions about all three of our characters,” he says. “That is what I think makes movies stay with people and land and be provocative — not just be provocative for its own sake, but really to ground it, make it real, but also respect the audience.”
The filmmaker is also careful about how that might sound to others: “That sounds a little bit like, ‘We’ll see if the audience is smart enough to like my movie,’ and I don’t mean that. I just hope that complexity is actually welcomed by the audience.”
That complexity is approached by Yeun’s character by trying to get beneath the campaign talk and find what Mark actually wants. “All your motivations are now buried under so much artifice that you're like, ‘Can you just get to what it is that you want?’ And that’s what I always felt with Sam was I was like, ‘Get to the thing, get to the thing, and then we can move it forward.’ But then it got complicated.”
Adriana Paz and Luis Gerardo Méndez Ask Who Gets to Be a Hero
“They are just not allowed to be heroes in this country because of the power structure.”
In the film, Mark and Abigail have hired help in Paz’s Cecilia, who has worked countless years for the Kimballs. But when she asks them to help Méndez’s Ramon become a citizen, she’s seeking help from those she cares about — not just her employers. Paz admits to Collider that the bond between the two families is real. “They really loved each other. That’s true,” she explains. “But at the same time, when you are in this kind of situation, it’s like who or what is going to be your priority, you know?”
Méndez points out what money and status allow the Kimballs to do — and what Cecilia and Ramon have to face without those resources. “It’s also about who controls the narrative. And it’s usually the person with more power, with more influence, with more money,” he says. “Our characters, they take the biggest risks; they have the least protection. They have the most honorable way of acting, but they are just not allowed to be heroes in this country because of the power structure, because of the legal system, because of the social constructions of not just the U.S. but the world, and that's very tragic.”
Paz adds, “Even though the people around them are telling them, ‘No, no, we are with you,’ they are not. They are really by themselves, and they have to start taking decisions from there.”
For the pair, acting opposite Affleck also brought a different challenge: watching their scene partner become their director between takes. “It was crazy being with him acting, and then he was being a different person going in front of the monitor,” Paz recalls. “But all the time he was kind, respectful, and that’s lovely.”
Méndez remembers how much time Affleck gave them despite everything else on his plate. “He’s directing and producing and acting, and if you have a stupid question, he will come to you, and he will engage with you for 10 minutes, knowing he has 100 things to do.”
That balance between actor and director also shaped how Affleck approached the story. “It’s an urgent thriller, but it also wants to be complicated and wants to break rules that I feel that we have of late, increasingly, maybe even been kind of imposed, or self-imposed, on films,” he says.
Animals arrives on Netflix and in select theaters October 9.
Animals
4 10
- Release Date
- October 9, 2026
- Runtime
- 106 minutes
- Director
- Ben Affleck
- Writers
- Billy Ray, Ben Affleck, Connor O. McIntyre
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