Animals Review: Ben Affleck's Return To Thrillers Is A Boring Mess

14 years after he last directed a thriller, Ben Affleck is back with political neo-noir mash-up for Netflix, but Animals is far from his finest work.

Published Oct 8, 2026, 7:00 PM EDT

Simon Gallagher has worked in movie and TV journalism for more than 17 years. He has written more than 6000 articles and reviews, and edited thousands more. He is an expert in the entertainment industry, particularly in the golden age of screen superheroes. Simon is also a Rotten Tomatoes approved critic.
 

For the director who made the excellent Argo and The Town, Ben Affleck hasn't quite hit the high early standards he set behind the camera. His last movie, Air, was a critical success, but go back to 2016, and Live By Night was pretty openly panned, and the fact that he initially got cold feet about making Netflix's new political crime thriller Animals was a little alarming.

But the project, which features Affleck as Los Angeles mayoral candidate Mark Kimball, eventually came together, with the cast completed by Kerry Washington (Kimball's wife, Abigail); Steven Yeun (his political aide, Sam); Adriana Paz as nanny Ceci; Luis Gerardo Méndez as her husband Ramon; and Gillian Anderson as mysterious political "fixer" Dayle Burton. Despite the political crime thriller label, Affleck's aim here is firmly on a sort of soft political neo-noir.

Animals' premise, as it was sold, is strong: Kimball's son, Denny (Christopher Woodley), is kidnapped. The moral political crusader is forced to make unthinkable choices to preserve his family as it threatens to crumble, as well as reckon with the possible ramifications for his political aspirations. It's a great setup for some interesting twists and rich socio-political commentary, and you'd think the cast was rounded enough to deliver a compelling, 106-minute dark thriller. Sadly, Animals is really not Affleck's finest work.

Animals Never Actually Justifies Its Own Existence

The best thrillers know exactly where they're going, and tend to employ clever plotting devices to escalate tension or tease who the real villain is. Animals does some of the necessary teasing, then seems to forget its obligation to tie things up in a nice narrative package. I am reluctant to give the movie any credit for defying expectations, because it doesn't actually feel intentional. It's just bad execution. And if it was intentional, it's an insulting approach to storytelling that deserves to be called out. That's about as much as I can say without getting into spoilers.

The interesting elements are all lined up and have actually all been revealed in the marketing. Affleck plays a squeaky-clean political do-gooder taking on Big Government as an independent mayoral candidate for LA. His marriage is strained thanks to his focus on his political career, and other things I won't spoil. Skeletons from his past threaten to burst out of his closet at any time, which is where the most interest lies. And then in comes Anderson's shady fixer – a sort of Faustian proxy – to make sage observations about the political machine and kidnappers.

In trying to be too many things, Animals is nothing much of anything.

I am not exaggerating when I say none of those threads are developed in any satisfying way, and almost every good idea is resolved in the most ludicrous or careless way possible. There's even a brief flirtation with Animals making some actual political statements about the state of American justice, immigration, and class privilege, but it's quickly shot down. The final message, buried in what ends up becoming a smug version of a Jason Statham/Liam Neeson thriller, is as impenetrably inaccessible as the lead couple is thoroughly unsympathetic.

It's unfortunate to come out of any movie wishing it were something else entirely, but it's remarkable that Animals offers three or four different shadows of itself that would have been better than the final version. It could have been a gripping Taken riff, in which the lead is a politician with no "very particular set of skills"; it could have been an actual Faustian bargain story; it could have been a clever meditation on tiered justice systems and the immigration story; and it could have been something a bit like The Front Runner, in which the true nature of a supposedly good man is tested. Alas, dear reader, in trying to be too many things, Animals is nothing much of anything.

Animals Is An Infuriating Exercise In Wasting Time

Image via Netflix

Animals might be the most frustrating mystery thriller I've seen in a long time, because it has no interest in answering any of its own questions. Wait, sorry, that's not entirely fair. Animals does answer some questions, like "what would a movie look like that completely wasted Steven Yeun's acting ability?", and "would anyone dare make a thriller built around a central mystery that provocatively fails to deliver any answers?"

It's a hollow story, filled with uniformly unlikable characters (presumably, that's the genius trick of the title), in which the escalating threat feels completely undercooked and every interesting idea is smothered to death under a pillow. It doesn't know what it's trying to say, then presents a weird, self-congratulatory epilogue that seems to suggest Affleck believes he's achieved some profound revelation. I sat through the credits as Netflix offered me trailers of what to binge next, baffled into almost complete silence.

Even Affleck's directing flourishes thrown in betray the actual tone of the movie.

The script, which was a joint collaboration between the cast, apparently, makes a fine case for nobody ever allowing that to happen ever again. Every emotional scene is undone by hammy melodrama, there's no depth to any of the outbursts (because we're not really given any opportunity to get under the skin of the characters), and everything just feels stale.

There seems to be an aspiration to make a neo-noir thriller with a 1990s spirit – inevitably, Mel Gibson's Ransom comes to mind – but nothing rings true. Even Affleck's directing flourishes thrown in betray the actual tone of the movie. For instance, as things escalate, and you'd expect to feel claustrophobia, sweeping, soulless drone shots break up the intensity. There are some terribly conceived slow-motion shots in the climactic sequence that genuinely made me laugh. Look out for 2026's version of Conan O'Brien's favorite Mac and Me scene. I am not joking.

In the end, Animals is utterly unremarkable and at times fatally boring. There are lots of kernels of good ideas that are all left to die on the vine, and it treats its audience with such open disdain in how things are wrapped up that you'll forgive my annoyance when you see it.

Animals is available to stream on Netflix from Friday, October 9.