Ben Affleck's Netflix Thriller Animals Is a Comeback That Isn't

Ben Affleck's new Netflix thriller Animals has drawn a scathing verdict from The Guardian, which calls the film "dull" and "lacking in bark and bite" in its review published October 8, 2026.

That's a hard landing for a project that, on paper, sits squarely in Affleck's wheelhouse. Animals is a Los Angeles-set crime-and-politics thriller — the west coast mirror of the Boston-based films that built his directing reputation, from the "artistically ambitious" Gone Baby Gone to the "juicily crowd-pleasing" The Town.

The Guardian's core criticism is anonymity. The film, the reviewer writes, "feels very similar to many other, better films," and delivers "a surprisingly anonymous effort" from a director whose whole brand was once specificity.

What's the actual story?

Affleck plays Mark Kimball, an Angeleno running for mayor of Los Angeles as an independent, non-party-affiliated candidate. His backstory stacks up a career as a teacher, a lawyer, and a first Gulf War veteran — a résumé the reviewer doubts the math on, but reads as evidence of "a fusion between Mark's dedication to service and a rapacious ambition."

Kimball has leveraged his family's wealth to push through the final stretch of a close campaign. Tensions with his wife, Abby, played by Kerry Washington, run "medium-high," and she's hiding problems of her own. Then, on Halloween, kidnappers take the couple's preteen son Denny (Christopher Woodley) and demand $7m — money Mark doesn't have.

Why does this one matter for Affleck?

The review frames Animals against a career puzzle. Affleck has staged multiple Hollywood comebacks, at least one built on his facility behind the camera. His acting career is currently stable — he works steadily and produces films through Artists Equity, the company he founded with longtime friend and collaborator Matt Damon.

His directing career, though, remains in what the reviewer calls "post-Oscar doldrums." Affleck has never been nominated for a best director Oscar, though his film Argo won best picture in 2013.

The surprise, per the Guardian, is that a film so well-matched to his proven strengths — crime, politics, urban tension — turns out "just how listless it can get." Even the candidate's stump speeches and interviews barely reveal a trace of a platform, which the review flags as a symptom of the film's vagueness rather than a deliberate choice.

What does this change for viewers? Mainly expectations. Animals arrives on Netflix positioned as a return to form from a director with two acclaimed thrillers behind him; the Guardian's read is that it's closer to a placeholder, an exercise that borrows the shape of better films without their engine. Whether Affleck's next directorial outing reverses the slide remains the open question his post-Argo decade has yet to answer.