‘Animals’ (2026) Netflix Movie Review - Someone Put Ben Affleck's Crime Thriller on a Leash

Animals, the new crime thriller directed by Ben Affleck, was first announced in January 2024, with Matt Damon and Jennifer Garner in the lead roles. Filming was scheduled to begin in March of that year in Los Angeles, but Affleck scrapped the plan just days before production was due to begin, reportedly after concerns arose over the similarities between his film and Spike Lee's Highest 2 Lowest. When the project was revived in February 2025, Damon was no longer available because of his commitment to The Odyssey, so Affleck stepped into the lead role himself. Garner, meanwhile, was replaced by Kerry Washington after she and Affleck mutually decided that their real-life history might prove distracting on screen. Well, things can always get awkward when your ex plays your wife on screen. Anyway, Animals has finally arrived on Netflix, and after watching it, all I can say is this: Affleck should have taken the initial setback as a sign. He should have abandoned the project altogether and moved on because what he ends up making is thoroughly run-of-the-mill. Like so many mediocre, forgettable Netflix originals, Animals is destined to rot in the platform's ever-expanding library. When the movie is over, you're left wondering why Affleck bothered directing it in the first place or what he found so appealing about the project—apart from the prospect of an easy payday. Damon might be thanking his stars that he got busy with The Odyssey.

This crime thriller, inspired by Akira Kurosawa's High and Low, has little going for it. There are observations about undocumented immigrants and a message (I think?) about politics being a game that can be won with money and manipulative tactics. But the filmmaker in Affleck doesn't know what to do with any of this. He fails to conjure a tense atmosphere from the fact that Cecilia (Adriana Paz) and Ramon (Luis Gerardo Méndez), both Mexican, don't trust their American employers, Mark (Affleck) and Abigail (Washington), to rescue their kidnapped child. Affleck also seems to be making some sort of eye-opening statement about politicians like Mark, who present themselves as dutiful, sincere figures of moral virtue in public but, in reality, turn everything into a PR exercise. This becomes particularly apparent in the final scenes, when Mark delivers a speech and gives interviews, acting all humble while finding opportunities to subtly highlight his efforts to save Cecilia's child by throwing around phrases along the lines of "my money" and "I took the risk to save someone's life." But if Affleck thinks he's exposing something politically revelatory, he's fooling himself. Observations about money, political image-making, and manufactured virtue are hardly groundbreaking. The problem isn't necessarily that he misunderstands these things; it's that he doesn't know what to do with them dramatically. Perhaps he simply didn't have enough creative juice for this film. That's the more convincing explanation, anyway. Logically airtight, if you ask me.

What—or rather, who—kept me watching despite all the vapidity was Gillian Anderson, who, as Dayle Burton, cracks you up with lines like "Leverage is the balance between the allure of incentive and the consequence of refusal" and "Kinetic refers to bodies in motion and the forces associated therewith." The whispery purr of Anderson's voice renders her dialogue so playfully solemn and seductive that you can't help but laugh and smile. Affleck's whole brief to her might as well have been: "Pose and aura-farm as if your life depends on it." Anderson gives Animals a slightly mischievous quality. If nothing else, Affleck should have untethered Dayle from his boring plot and allowed her to run wild on screen. An entire version of Animals could have drawn its energy from Anderson's fiery looks and quiet, animalistic fury. Simply put, that version would have been worth watching far more than this lazy crime thriller, which has no idea how to do justice to Dayle and ends up dispatching her perfunctorily. I laughed again, but this time at Affleck's incompetence. As Mark, Affleck might win the election. As the director of Animals, though, he loses at the polls. He loses the fight, and there's no pleasure in watching him crash and burn. Someone put this Animals on a leash.