Netflix | Released 9 October 2026 | Directed by Ben Affleck | Starring Ben Affleck, Kerry Washington, Gillian Anderson
Ben Affleck is a filmmaker who can do truly great work. Films such as “Gone Baby Gone,” “The Town,” and the Academy Award–winning “Argo” showed us a director who knew how to build suspense, how to craft complex characters, and how to deal with moral questions. “Animals,” his sixth film as a director, which was released straight to Netflix on October 9, 2026, is something else altogether: an example of what can go wrong when a great director tries to do too much and trusts too little.
The Setup Has Real Promise
Affleck portrays Mark, who is a politician, with an outward appearance that almost hides the fractures within his life. The movie starts with one of his lengthy political advertisements; a deliberately patronizing collection of buzzwords and clichéd images of a man of the people. It targets the right demographic group and works hard to hide the fact that he and his family live in a highly priced Beverly Hills house, worth more than ten million dollars. Kerry Washington plays the role of his wife. When a kidnapping scheme enters into their already fragmented domestic scene, it has the structure of something that might really be unsettling; a thrilling movie with a marriage relationship that is morally corrupt and has complex morality that Affleck has dealt with before. It does not quite make it there.
A Film That Cannot Decide What It Is
Whereas the most common criticism against Animals is that it lacks coherence rather than being outrightly bad. The issue with coherence is brought up by the critics in Deadline, IndieWire, and Variety. They are complaining about how the movie cannot make up its mind on what it is trying to tell. Is it a movie about the marriage of two people whose secrets have hardened them and how the crisis pushes them to reveal those secrets? Or is it a kidnapping thriller that involves time and high body count? Affleck tries to do both, but neither works well due to the presence of the other. Fighting gets louder in the movie, but life-and-death stakes are not really felt, leading to tonal whiplash in the second part of the movie.
Also, there are traces of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963) and Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest (2025) in the movie. This lineage has been spotted by the critics, who did not hold back in mentioning the connection. This connection is not flattering, and it is more evident when Animals fails to reach the moral grandeur of its predecessors.
What Works — and Why It Is Not Enough
Craft abounds, and sometimes it shows through. The work of cinematographer Robert Elswit makes the film look much more expensive than it should be for its streaming release, and Affleck the actor gives Mark a defensive and tight-lipped quality that works well with the character’s evasion. Gillian Anderson has been singled out in almost all reviews as the most fun element of the entire film, the only one of the cast who seems to have found exactly the tone that the film needed.
John Nugent from Empire Magazine was not wrong when he described the film as an uneven mixture and definitely not Affleck’s best work, but with some hints of the strength and precision that made his previous films interesting. Variety called it a sour and nasty diversion that might have become something much worse. In both cases, the criticism seems quite accurate, and both reviews point out the same flaw – the potential wasted on a superficial movie.
Verdict
Metacritic has scored the film at 33 out of 21 reviews, and on Rotten Tomatoes the film received 32% from 66 reviews. The critic consensus on Animals is very clear and united for a movie which involves such a great amount of talent. It is not a bad movie; Affleck makes the movie flow through his professionalism, and there are some scenes that clearly prove why the best work by him is so appreciated. But the film complicates its concept, wears down its characters before earning the audience’s interest, and reaches its destination without really earning the journey.
As an easy Netflix night, it works fine. As a film made by one of the most interesting directors of Hollywood, it is going the wrong way.
Rating: 5/10
