‘Animals’ Review: A Ransom Clock Is Ticking, So Why Does Nothing Feel Urgent?

Ben Affleck has spent much of his career flipping between acting stardom and a quietly respectable directing résumé, and ‘Animals’ puts both hats back on at once. He directs, cowrites with Billy Ray and Connor O. McIntyre, and stars, with Matt Damon among the producers. The Netflix crime thriller lands in select theaters and on the platform today, October 9, and runs one hour and forty six minutes.

The setup is a tidy one. Affleck plays Mark Kimball, a wealthy lawyer running as an independent for Mayor of Los Angeles, with his wife Abigail, played by Kerry Washington, beside him. Their campaign has drained nearly all their money, which makes a Halloween phone call announcing that their son has been kidnapped even more punishing.

From there, the film becomes one long desperate night. Steven Yeun plays the loyal campaign manager who knows a fixer, and Gillian Anderson is the mysterious broker willing to front the ransom for a price. Adriana Paz and Luis Gerardo Méndez round out a household story that nudges the film toward immigration and the cost of political ambition.

On paper that is a juicy pressure cooker, and it is exactly where ‘Animals’ begins to lose me. Affleck stages most of the crisis as people shouting at each other while the camera swoops around the room, and that is a poor substitute for dread. I never believed this child was in real danger, which is a serious problem for a movie built around a ticking clock.

The performances do not help matters as much as they should. Affleck and Washington clearly commit, but the script gives them big emotions without much underneath, and a few of the marital blowups tip into melodrama. Affleck in particular pushes things a notch too far, and a more restrained turn might have let the material breathe.

The film also cannot decide what it wants to be. It gestures at political commentary, flirts with a whodunit around the Kimball marriage, and keeps returning to the standard rhythms of a kidnapping thriller. None of those threads gets enough room, so the whole thing feels stretched across too many ideas and committed to very few.

The story clearly echoes Akira Kurosawa’s ‘High and Low,’ and that only underlines what is missing here. That classic was built on a tense, lingering moral squeeze, while ‘Animals’ keeps hurrying past its best questions. The ending lands on a note that seems to want applause and instead left me cold.

Still, I would not call this a disaster. The pace is brisk, the cast is too talented to be dull, and Anderson in particular makes a chilly, enigmatic presence out of very little. There are stretches where the film nearly clicks, and I found myself wishing it had trusted its own tension a little more.

Taken on my own terms, ‘Animals’ is a watchable but frustrating thriller that wastes a strong premise and a stacked ensemble. It is brisk enough to keep you in your seat and hollow enough that you will forget most of it by morning. I give it 5 out of 10.

Did Ben Affleck’s ‘Animals’ work for you or leave you cold, and does my score feel fair, so tell me in the comments.