Ben Affleck's 'Animals' Gets Lukewarm Netflix Reviews — SkimNews
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- "Animals" marks Ben Affleck's sixth directorial effort, going straight to Netflix with Affleck starring as wealthy Los Angeles attorney Mark Kimball in the middle of a well-funded mayoral campaign from a $10 million Beverly Hills home
- The plot pivots on the $7 million kidnapping of Mark's son Denny on Halloween, which exposes family secrets including wife Abigail's online extramarital affair and the couple's refusal to employ their Mexican nanny's illegal-immigrant boyfriend
- Kerry Washington plays Abigail, with Steven Yeun as campaign manager Sam, Gillian Anderson as enigmatic British fixer Dayle Burton, and "Emilia Pérez" standout Adriana Paz as nanny Cecilia; Affleck co-wrote the script with Billy Ray and Connor O. McIntyre
- Critics across outlets converge on disappointment: IndieWire called the Netflix film "tedious" and "quite literally just bad TV," Deadline said it was "stretched too thin," and even the more measured Variety review still labels it "disposable pulp" — though Variety does find it "gripping" and singles out a fleeting glimpse of "America at its cruellest and most unequal"
- For promotion, Affleck reportedly staged an actual Los Angeles mayoral campaign as his character, per Deadline, including signs reading "Do Not Vote For Me!"
Why it matters: For Affleck, whose post-'Argo' career has underdelivered, the direct-to-Netflix rollout frames him as an audience-minded journeyman rather than a prestige auteur, per Variety. The near-unanimous critical disappointment across IndieWire, Deadline, and Variety all flags the same missed political-satire potential — viewers get pulpy genre thrills, not the class bite the Mexican-nanny subplot teases.
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