Animals (2026) Review: Great Cast, Flat Thriller — Affleck Directs Himself Into the Same Overwrought Script He Wrote

Ben Affleck's fifth film as director casts himself as an LA mayoral candidate whose son is kidnapped — and lands at 36% on Rotten Tomatoes, his lowest score since 2016's Live by Night.

Ben Affleck has one of the more consistent track records of any actor-turned-director working today: Gone Baby Gone at 94%, The Town at 92%, Argo at 96%, Air at 93%. Animals, which he directs, co-writes and stars in opposite Kerry Washington, breaks that streak hard — 36% on Rotten Tomatoes from 47 critics and 33 on Metacritic from 19, as of October 10, 2026. It's his worst-reviewed film since 2016's Live by Night, which landed at 34%.

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The setup has real bite on paper. Affleck plays Mark Kimball, a Los Angeles mayoral candidate who has sunk most of his money into the campaign; when his young son is kidnapped, he and his wife Abigail (Washington) have almost nothing liquid to pay the ransom and are forced to dig up cash from parts of their lives they'd rather keep buried. Gillian Anderson, Steven Yeun and Luis Gerardo Méndez round out a genuinely strong supporting cast, and the reviews are consistent on one point: nobody in this movie is phoning it in.

What critics are not forgiving is the script, which Affleck co-wrote with Connor O. McIntyre and Billy Ray. The New York Times' Jeannette Catsoulis put it memorably: "Like an inedible gruel made with top-shelf ingredients, Ben Affleck's Animals whisks its high-value cast into an overwrought script." Screen Rant's Simon Gallagher called it "the most frustrating mystery thriller I've seen in a long time," one that ends up "utterly unremarkable" despite a premise with real stakes. MovieWeb's Charles Papadopoulos landed on the same core complaint from a different angle: "The problem with Animals is that it struggles to offer anything new."

That's the throughline across the negative reviews: not incompetence, but a kidnapping thriller that never finds a reason to exist beyond its cast. A rich family forced to confront ugly truths under ransom pressure is familiar ground — Prisoners, Gone Baby Gone itself — and the reviews suggest Animals never finds its own angle on it, settling for plot mechanics over the moral complication that made Affleck's best work as a director actually land.

Where the film does get real credit is the cast chemistry, specifically Washington and Anderson, whose scenes are singled out in multiple reviews as the moments the film actually comes alive. Cinematographer Robert Elswit, who shot There Will Be Blood and Nightcrawler, gives the Los Angeles setting a genuine sense of place rather than generic thriller gloss — even critics otherwise unimpressed by the film credit the visual craft.

Produced by Affleck's own Artists Equity (with Matt Damon among the producers) alongside Makeready and Fifth Season, Animals streamed globally on Netflix starting October 9, 2026, with a limited theatrical run the same day. For a studio-backed star vehicle with this cast, the ceiling was higher than a 36% debut — and the reviews make clear the ceiling was never really about the acting.

If you're deciding whether to watch: this is a competently made, well-acted film that critics agree never earns its premise. Go in for Washington and Anderson's scenes and Elswit's camera work, not for a kidnapping thriller that surprises you. If the ransom-thriller genre already has to work hard to win you over, Animals probably won't be the one that does it.