Ben Affleck is back behind and in front of the camera with Animals, an entertaining new thriller that spices up the kidnap movie formula with a neat twist that asks big moral questions of its protagonists and viewers.
Animals is in select theaters and on Netflix on October 9. Affleck plays Mark Kimball, a tycoon running as an independent candidate to become the next mayor of Los Angeles. The film acknowledges that he is a cynical political strategist's dream candidate: a middle-aged white male Army veteran with progressive views, a Black wife and mixed-race son, who takes no outside funding and speaks fluent Spanish.
It is Halloween and LA is just days away from electing its next mayor. Mark has run a vigorous, self-funded campaign, but he is behind enough that he could lose the election and with it, all the fortune he's poured into it. His therapist wife Abigail (Kerry Washington) is unaware of the extent to which he's spent their savings on his campaign. Unbeknownst to Mark, Abigail is having an affair, with the other man played by Affleck’s Justice League co-star Ray Fisher.
Mark and Abigail receive a call from an unknown man who reveals he's kidnapped their son Denny (Christopher Woodley) and demands a $7 million ransom, money they do not have on hand because it's all tied up in Mark’s self-funded campaign. In their desperation, they agree to Mark’s campaign manager Sam’s (Steven Yeun) idea of bringing in mysterious fixer Dayle Burton (Gillian Anderson), who can procure the ransom money, with additional fees involved. The stone-cold, all-business Dayle begins schooling Mark and Abigail on how to deal with the kidnapper while also debunking any illusions they may have about human nature and moral stances.
The film's significant twist spins the movie into a far more compelling direction, both plot-wise and thematically. Until that point, Animals was an engaging flick, but it wasn’t doing anything much different from what has already been seen in other kidnapping movies like Ransom. However, the twist then triggers a host of moral quandaries for Mark and Abigail to wrestle with while also forcing them to confront bitter truths about each other and their relationship.
Affleck and Washington make their characters three-dimensional, flawed people. Both Mark and Abigail can be hypocritical and selfish at times, and had been unable to speak plainly about their problems with each other until this unthinkable crime happens. They hit each other with some hard truths, and the actors do a good job of capturing the strains in the marriage.
Animals takes place after the fires that devastated LA in 2025, and that palpable anger against the political establishment, and how the haves and have-nots have fared since, is a key factor in the film. While Animals reflects the city’s socioeconomic layers and diverse populace, LA is used here as a microcosm of the US for a broader thematic and political commentary about the rich and the poor and American citizens and undocumented immigrants. All said, Animals gets pretty bleak and cynical in its depiction of human nature and the price of victory.
None of the choices available to the protagonists are good ones, and the many “what would you do in this scenario?” questions the film poses keep the story compelling when the kidnapping plot itself ventures into formula.