Animals ending explained: Who was kidnapped and what happens to Mark Kimball?

Ben Affleck's Animals begins as a kidnap thriller, but by the time its credits roll, the fate of the abducted child is almost secondary to the film's bigger question: just how far will Mark Kimball go to protect himself?

Affleck – who also directs and co-writes the Netflix film – stars as Mark, an independent candidate for mayor of Los Angeles whose ambitions extend far beyond City Hall. Behind the polished public image, though, his finances are precarious, his marriage to psychologist Abigail (Kerry Washington) is under strain and both husband and wife are keeping serious secrets from one another.

All of those problems explode into the open after Mark receives a call informing him that his son Denny (Christopher Woodley) has been kidnapped, with the caller demanding $7 million for his safe return.

What follows involves a mistaken identity, multiple kidnappers, an illicit affair, a fixer played by Gillian Anderson and a particularly bloody confrontation in the Los Angeles River.

So what exactly happens at the end of Animals – and how does Mark somehow emerge from the nightmare in a stronger position than before?

Here's everything you need to know.

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Was Denny kidnapped in Animals?

No – and that's the first major twist.

The kidnapping takes place on Halloween, when Denny is out trick-or-treating alongside Hector, the stepson of the Kimballs' housekeeper Cecilia. Crucially, the two boys are wearing the same masked costume.

When Mark receives a photograph apparently showing Denny in captivity, he and Abigail naturally believe their son has been taken. The kidnapper demands $7 million by midnight and warns Mark that he is being watched.

The problem is that Mark no longer has anything close to that amount of readily available cash.

His mayoral campaign is struggling in the polls and, without telling Abigail, Mark has poured their family savings into trying to keep it alive. His campaign manager Sam (Steven Yeun) therefore connects him with Dayle Burton (Gillian Anderson), a fixer capable of procuring the ransom.

Doing so will cost the Kimballs dearly: Dayle wants another $1.4 million on top of the $7 million and their house effectively becomes collateral.

But just as Mark and Abigail contemplate risking almost everything they own, Denny suddenly walks back into the house.

He was never kidnapped at all.

Denny had simply become separated from Cecilia and Hector amid the Halloween crowds and eventually managed to find his way home.

The kidnappers have taken Hector by mistake.

Why do Mark and Abigail pay the ransom for Hector?

Shortly afterwards, Hector's father Ramon arrives with an injured Cecilia, and Mark receives a video confirming that Hector is being held captive.

Mark initially questions whether he and Abigail should sacrifice virtually everything they have to save a child they barely know. But there is another complication: Hector and his family are Latino, Ramon is undocumented and Mark badly needs Latino support to win the mayoral election.

As Sam points out, allowing Hector to die when Mark could have saved him would destroy his campaign.

The kidnapper understands that too. If Mark refuses to pay, he can be publicly portrayed as selfish, racist and elitist – a wealthy politician who was prepared to spend millions when he believed his own son was in danger, but not when the victim turned out to be the child of his immigrant employee.

Mark therefore agrees to pay the $7 million.

It's one of the film's most important turning points, because his motivations remain deliberately murky. Saving Hector is unquestionably the right thing to do, but Animals repeatedly makes clear that Mark is also calculating what every decision will mean for his career.

What is Dayle's 'option 3'?

Dayle gives Mark three possible ways of dealing with the kidnappers.

He can involve the police, pay the ransom and hope Hector is released – or take the considerably darker third option: Dayle can have the kidnappers killed.

Initially, she advises Mark to delay the ransom exchange until morning, forcing the kidnappers to emerge during daylight, thus giving her people a better opportunity to control the situation.

Meanwhile, Ramon takes matters into his own hands. Knowing that the kidnappers have been watching the Kimball home, he searches the surrounding area and actually manages to find one of them. The two fight, although the kidnapper eventually escapes.

That intervention has consequences. While Mark is attending a crucial event involving the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights – CHIRLA – the kidnappers call and angrily reveal that there is more than one of them. Believing Mark sent Ramon after them, they raise the ransom demand to $10 million.

Mark insists he cannot possibly pay it, and the kidnappers eventually return to the original $7 million demand, arranging a final exchange at 5am.

But by now Mark has made another decision. He wants option 3.

What happens between Mark and Abigail?

The kidnapping also forces the Kimballs' already troubled marriage to a breaking point.

Mark has been hiding the true state of their finances from Abigail, having spent their savings on his political ambitions.

But Abigail has a secret of her own. She has been having an affair with Ron, played by Ray Fisher. Mark eventually discovers the affair after seeing a message from Ron on Abigail's phone.

Their resulting argument is vicious, with Mark acknowledging his own behaviour but insisting that he did not cause Abigail's infidelity.

The pair nevertheless reconcile, at least temporarily. Abigail asks Mark to forgive her and the couple sleep together before the ransom exchange. She then sends Ron a message ending their affair.

Whether this represents a genuine repair of their marriage is much more ambiguous. By the end of the film, Mark and Abigail appear united again – but they are also now united by everything they have done, and covered up, over the course of the kidnapping.

What happens at the ransom drop?

Mark and Dayle drive to the ransom exchange at the concrete-lined Los Angeles River. The kidnapper calls Mark and reveals that the crime is personal, accusing him of having "destroyed everything I have".

Mark follows the instructions, taking the money to the designated spot. A figure wearing a rabbit mask then appears with Hector and throws the boy down into the channel, where Mark catches him.

Two masked kidnappers approach Mark and Hector – but Dayle has stationed her armed associate Rand nearby with a sniper rifle and Rand shoots both men dead.

For a moment, it appears that Dayle's plan has worked perfectly. Except there is a third kidnapper.

Hidden farther away, he shoots Rand dead and then shoots Dayle when she gets out of the vehicle. The surviving kidnapper advances towards Mark and Hector, seemingly leaving them with no way out.

Then he is shot in the head. The shooter is Ramon.

Having followed Mark to the exchange, Hector's father arrives at precisely the moment he is needed and saves both Mark and his stepson.

Does Dayle die?

Yes.

Although Dayle initially survives being shot, she does not make it out of the aftermath. Her death also gives Mark the opportunity to deal with a potentially catastrophic piece of evidence.

Knowing that Dayle recorded him explicitly ordering the kidnappers' deaths, he takes possession of her phone, allowing him to destroy the recording and eliminate the leverage she had over him.

By the end of the confrontation, the kidnappers, Dayle and Rand are all dead – leaving Mark, Ramon and Hector as the people who can determine how the night's events will be presented to the outside world.

And that is where Mark's political instincts truly take over.

What deal does Mark make with Ramon?

The final twist isn't about the kidnapping at all. It's about the story Mark constructs afterwards.

Rather than simply telling the truth, Mark and Ramon effectively strike a mutually beneficial bargain.

It is strongly implied that Mark gives Ramon and Cecilia the $7 million ransom money.

In exchange, Ramon supports a radically rewritten version of events.

At the subsequent press conference, Sam appears alongside Mark and Abigail, Cecilia and Ramon as the public is told a heroic story about the mayoral candidate's actions.

According to this version, Mark willingly handed over his money to rescue Hector and then personally helped save Hector and Ramon from the kidnappers.

That isn't what actually happened.

Mark did ultimately risk his life for Hector, but he also considered allowing the boy to die, agreed to have the kidnappers murdered and survived only because Ramon followed him to the exchange and killed the last attacker.

The bodies of the kidnappers, Dayle and Rand are also disposed of as part of the cover-up, ensuring that the full truth cannot easily emerge.

Ramon, Cecilia and Hector then leave for Mexico with the money.

Does Mark become mayor?

Yes – and the most cynical element of the Animals ending is that the entire ordeal ultimately helps Mark politically.

Before Hector's kidnapping, Mark is trailing in the polls and desperately needs Latino voters to revive his campaign. Afterwards, he is publicly transformed into a man who risked everything to save an immigrant child.

He uses that story to secure the backing of CHIRLA and win over precisely the voters he had previously been struggling to reach.

Even the illegal acts Mark publicly admits to committing in the course of the rescue ultimately do little damage. His punishment amounts to a year's probation, a fine and community service.

He wins the mayoral election – and rather than ending his wider political ambitions, the events of the film make him a potential future presidential candidate.

It's the final irony of Animals: Mark spends most of the film desperately trying to prevent the kidnapping from destroying his political career, only to discover that the crisis can instead be converted into the very thing that propels him towards greater power.

What does the Animals ending mean?

The ending brings the film's themes of class, race, immigration and political self-interest together.

Mark does eventually save Hector. But Animals repeatedly complicates any straightforward reading of that decision as heroic.

When he believes Denny has been kidnapped, there is no question that he will do whatever is necessary to save his son. Once Denny returns safely and the victim turns out to be Hector, however, Mark immediately begins calculating what the boy's life is worth to him – financially, morally and politically.

Ramon and Cecilia occupy an entirely different position. They work for the wealthy Kimballs, Ramon is denied employment because of his undocumented status and, when Hector is taken, they do not possess the money or influence necessary to rescue him themselves.

Yet Ramon ultimately proves far more capable of protecting the children than the powerful people around him. It is Ramon, not Dayle's expensive professional operation, who kills the final kidnapper and saves Mark and Hector.

But Mark still ends up controlling the narrative.

By giving Ramon and his family the ransom money, he buys both their silence and their cooperation. Ramon gets the resources to take his family away and start again; Mark gets an inspirational political story.

Everyone involved therefore leaves with something they want – except that the truth has been completely sacrificed in the process.

Affleck has described Animals as a story concerned with whether people possess a genuine moral compass or simply act according to their own interests, and the ending deliberately refuses to offer Mark an uncomplicated redemption.

He may have helped save Hector, but he also exploited Hector's ordeal, concealed multiple deaths and turned a family's trauma into campaign material.

By the final scenes, the supposedly desperate mayoral candidate is not ruined, he has become more powerful than ever.

And with the presidency now apparently within reach, Animals leaves us with the unsettling possibility that everything Mark did wasn't the destruction of his carefully constructed public identity. It was the making of it.

Animals is available to watch now on Netflix. You can sign up to Netflix from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky TV and Virgin Media.

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