Ben Affleck’s next team-up with Netflix is debuting on the streamer on Friday. Affleck stars in the new Netflix original movie “Animals,” which debuts on the streamer on Friday, Oct. 9. Affleck most recently starred in “The Rip” for Netflix with longtime collaborator Matt Damon, and directed “Animals” in addition to serving as the film’s headlining star.

“Animals” stars Affleck as Mark Kimball, a mayoral candidate in Los Angeles whose son is kidnapped. Given mere hours to come up with a huge ransom, Kimball and his wife Abigail (Kerry Washington) are forced to do things they never wanted the public to see in order to get their son back safely.

The film is packed with big-name stars; Affleck has more than one Oscar win to his name, and he’s joined by the Emmy-winning Washington. Gillian Anderson also stars in the film as the shadowy fixer Dayle Burton, with Steven Yuen, Luis Gerardo Méndez, Adriana Paz, Ray Fisher, and Christopher Woodley rounding out the cast.

Watch the trailer for ‘Animals’

Action-packed thriller titles like “Animals” don’t always get the best reviews, unless they’re able to tread new ground with their narratives. Unfortunately, thus far, “Animals” hasn’t proven a major hit with critics; as of the time of this writing, the film has a 42% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 31 on Metacritic, indicating “Generally Unfavorable” reviews. What are critics saying specifically about “Animals”? Read their thoughts below!

What do critics think of ‘Animals’ on Netflix?

Brian Tallerico | RogerEbert.com

The promise of a taut kidnapping drama called “Animals” from a director who likely would have been more correctly lauded a half-century ago was incredibly promising. So it brings me no joy to say that this is easily Affleck’s worst directorial effort, a movie that clearly went through the Rewrite Machine a dozen or so times, losing important things like theme, focus, character, and tension.

Jim Vejvoda | IGN

The film’s big twist – which I will not reveal here – spins the movie into a far more compelling direction, both plot-wise and thematically. Until that point, Animals was an engaging flick, but it wasn’t doing anything much different from what we’ve already seen in other kidnapping movies like Ransom (i.e., who can you trust, who is the kidnapper, lots of harrowing phone calls, etc). But the twist then triggers a host of moral quandaries for Mark and Abigail to wrestle with while also forcing them to confront bitter truths about each other and their relationship.

Chris Evangelista | Slashfilm

Even if you can overlook the AI detail (and to be fair, I’m sure most people half-watching this on Netflix as they use the Fanduel Casino app on their phone won’t even notice), “Animals” is still a disappointment. It’s a thriller that fails to thrill, and makes you wonder what happened to Affleck as a filmmaker. I’m a fan of several of Affleck’s directorial efforts…but his crime thriller “Live By Night” was a bit of a bust, and now so is “Animals,” which plays out like a loose remake of Akira Kurosawa’s “High and Low” — which was just recently remade by Spike Lee in the form of “Highest 2 Lowest.” Affleck has assembled a talented cast (with himself in the lead), and “Animals” is never offensively bad. It’s just woefully average, maybe even a bit below-average. Anyway, I’m sure it’ll be the number one movie on Netflix by the time you’re reading this.

Nick Schager | The Daily Beast

Animals has the same twist featured in Kurosawa and Lee’s predecessors, but Netflix has forbidden any pre-release reviews from mentioning it. Still, it’s no spoiler to relay that it challenges Mark and Abby’s morality, torn as they are between altruism and self-interest, and it thrusts the film down spikier avenues. Or rather, that’s what it should do, except that Connor O. McIntyre, Billy Ray, and Affleck’s script doesn’t wrestle with any of the issues it introduces; they’re just window-dressing designed to provide a veneer of depth.

Jake Coyle Associated Press

Affleck is a savvy and thoughtful filmmaker who can deftly weave human stories, genre mechanics and social issues together. But “Animals” feels narratively underpowered and melodramatically forced. It offers Affleck some good opportunities to flaunt his Spanish and comment on the false fronts that exist both in public officialdom and intimate relationships. But it doesn’t come anywhere close to matching the propulsion of Kurosawa.

David Rooney | The Hollywood Reporter

In his accomplished early directorial efforts Gone Baby Gone and The Town, Affleck showed a sure hand balancing character-driven drama with spurts of action and violence. Here, despite the potential of gritty locations in the city’s under-policed northeast and a climactic act in the concrete-lined L.A. River channel, the confrontations become overly complicated and the execution of them messy…Anyone craving a smart, multi-layered crime thriller about moral choices, marital trust, the casualties of capitalism, and the divisions of social and class structures should check out the riveting High and Low. All due respect to Ben Affleck, but he’s no Toshiro Mifune.

Robert Brian Taylor | Collider

That’s the big problem with Animals — it has too many competing ideas. When combined with characters who don’t make much of an impact and an over-inflated sense of self-importance, you’re left with a film that is going to have a tough time generating anything other than audience apathy. “Humans are animals who tell stories,” Dayle says at one point, giving the movie its title. I guess she’s right, but you’re usually hoping for a story more engrossing than the one Animals decides to tell.

Jesse Hassenger | The Guardian

Affleck the actor is still fun to watch, especially playing a politician visibly straining to not look like one – a charismatic guy nonetheless laboring to resemble a narrative version who may be a little nicer and more down-to-earth than he really is. But despite employing ace cinematographer Robert Elswit, who shot Affleck’s The Town as well as There Will Be Blood, among many others, the look of Animals is pretty Netflix-y – slick, lacking in texture and ultimately a bit dull. In other words, Affleck has – presumably by accident – imitated his character. This is a movie that just wants to get the job done with frictionless likability, with seemingly no one inquiring about why.

Animals

October 9, 2026

When the son of an L.A. mayoral candidate is kidnapped, he and his wife have a few hours to come up with the ransom payment. With most of their money spent on his political campaign, they have to get their hands dirty and expose a side of their lives they never intended to see the light of day.