Ben Affleck gets a chance to show off his cultured Mexican Spanish while Gillian Anderson goes full-on campy vamp, complete with a gelled-back blonde hairdo, in Affleck’s otherwise throwaway new Netflix thriller, “Animals.” The director of “Argo” and “The Town,” underwritten (by three people, no less: Connor O. McEntire, Billy Ray and Affleck) also stars in the film as a penniless Los Angeles mayoral candidate who’s borrowing money from himself to finance a campaign that’s on the verge of victory. But he needs just over two percent of the Latino vote to overtake the incumbent mayor — and that’s when a domestic kidnapping scandal presents a morally reprehensible but tempting potential opportunity.
Despite great theatrical play at Netflix’s partner venues, “Animals” is a movie that aims to live and die on the streaming platform, lacking the polish of the streamer’s dullest serials, but without any of the stylistic brio or creative vision to justify a big-screen presentation. It’s a tweener in the sense that it’s not a TV show, but it sure looks like a bad show. Nor is it a satisfying feature film, with a plethora of narrative improbabilities and a generally talented cast letting down weak writing that’s only intended to be shouted out onscreen by catchy line readers. (Affleck questioned the “assembly line” nature of Netflix filmmaking a few years ago; Dan Lin must have a talent for persuasion, because this movie certainly looks like it was put together in a factory.)
Extremely charming, very friendly, and with the easy looks and charm that could lead any normal political campaign, Mark Kimball is just inches away from becoming mayor of Los Angeles. He has a beautiful wife, Abigail (Kerry Washington), who is also black, so Mark gets extra points in the image department for a thoroughly inclusive profile (and one of the movie’s gestures at getting interrogated during the late throwdown fight). They have a little boy, whose future looks bright. Their luxurious, multi-level home is located in the Hollywood Hills, several stories above the street-level urban ruins, tent cities, and crime below.
They also have a Mexican nanny, Cecilia (the great Adriana Paz, hopelessly wasted in a subservient victim role), whom they call and treat as family. She desperately wants Mark and Abigail to hire her lover Ramon (Luis Gerardo Méndez), whose young son Cecilia has adopted. But Ramon is undocumented, and as Abigail reminds her employee, her husband Mark is a law-abiding citizen, so he could never do this.
It is Halloween, and hopes, dreams, and endless sunny days are dashed when Mark receives a phone call demanding a $7 million ransom for the safe return of his son, having been sent by Abigail to go trick-or-treating with Ramon’s son. Is the caller bluffing? He has not shown any evidence of being alive or even being kidnapped. But supportingly, “Animals” has already established several skeletons and secrets in the closet between Mark and Abigail that could leave anyone vulnerable to a targeted kidnapping operation. For example, Abigail is having an affair with another man who is black – a particular detail that will also screw Mark later – and who also has money and status. During one of their assignments, Ron (Ray Fisher, here and gone like vapor) tells Abigail that he loves her so much that he would be content living with her in a one-bedroom apartment on La Brea. how horrible. But such a line also removes the confusion in everyone’s mind.
Meanwhile, Mark is taking out his home equity to fund his campaign, so winning isn’t optional. His campaign manager, Sam (Steven Yeun), partners in Mark’s determination but is more ruthless: when a kidnapping victim turns up Being someone else’s son, Sam sees an opportunity to increase the poll numbers in Mark’s favor. Mark’s a nice guy, Mark who loves his community. Mark who speaks perfect Spanish with a weird sexy Mexican accent to his groundskeeper.
Enter glamorous, mysterious crisis fixer Daley (Anderson, who I could see reading a phone book, or perhaps the most mundane While Anderson seems to be taking a lot of time playing a disgustingly serious role – but in the most non-serious way – it’s a shame the trio of screenwriters couldn’t do something better for him. Daley has other, more sinister options on the table (or under his off-white power suit) for an additional fee. During all-night deliberations and telephone conversations with the kidnapper, those options begin to tempt Mark and Abigail as their marriage begins to unravel.
It’s a pity that the ChatGPT-adjacent story “Animals,” the latest film from a man who directed a fake film crew in fictional Tehran to fake the Iranian hostage crisis, offers few surprises, twists or narrative turns. That’s right up to a vaguely well-paced sequence in an abandoned Los Angeles river at dawn (and with a ridiculously laugh-worthy handoff moment). The film was shot by Robert Elswit, the Oscar-winning cinematographer of “There Will Be Blood” and Netflix’s dazzling black-and-white noir “Replay.”
Or is it someone else named Robert Elswit? His visual signature is nowhere to be found here, nor is there any visual signature. “Animals” is a series of shot-reverse-shots consisting of pure coverage, blocked and framed to fit on a TV or phone screen for passive, languid viewing. For every piece of drone footage spread across LA, every shot that creates about two feet of space between actors without any noise, I kept wishing for more Gillian Anderson, More Gillian AndersonPlease!
Grade: C-
“Animals” will be released in select theaters and begin streaming on Netflix on Friday, October 9.