Animals: Ben Affleck’s thriller about a politician who can’t hide his ugly side

As the new Netflix thriller Animals began, I wasn’t sure how its 106-minute runtime was going to keep me sympathetic to the plight of a wealthy American politician. Ben Affleck, directed, co-wrote and stars in the film as Mark Kimball, a Los Angeles mayoral candidate.
Animals begins with Kimball staking much of his wealth and financial security on an election campaign. The final hurdle to securing the seat involves winning over the city’s Latino voters. The film opens to a montage of Kimball feigning his affability for votes, which results quite quickly in a hollow and unlikeable protagonist, or perhaps even worse, a main character that audiences are indifferent towards.
Early on, we see that Kimball spends a lot of time gambling more money than most families could ever dream of spending. He spends time pacing around his swimming pool while his wife Abigail (Kerry Washington), a practising therapist, cries in her walk-in wardrobe over an ongoing infidelity of hers. Such scenes do little to elicit compassion. Fortunately, these tiny woes of the uber-wealthy are not the film’s main focus, but the set-up for a domestic thriller with something to say.
Set on Halloween, the film sends the Kimball family in different directions for the evening. While Abigail stays home, their ten-year-old son, Denny (Christopher Woodley), heads out trick-or-treating with the family’s housekeeper, Cecilia (Adriana Paz). Her husband Ramon (Luis Gerardo Méndez) is struggling to find work and the Kimballs are unwilling to employ him because of his undocumented status. Mark prepares to address the Latino community in a bid to secure the votes he needs. But when Denny is kidnapped and held for ransom, electoral concerns and the guilt of an affair gives way to the relatable fears and primal instincts of parents trying to bring their child home unharmed.
In many ways, Animals is reminiscent of Ron Howard’s film Ransom (1996) which is about the psychological trauma wrought upon a wealthy couple after their nine-year old son is kidnapped and held for a $2 million ransom. Animals, like Ransom, explores this anguish but with the added stress of Mark’s need to keep up his outer mask of control and personability while he attempts to juggle his political duties around the domestic ordeal.
In a modern world of surveillance, where people’s words and behaviour can be endlessly scrutinised and public images carefully constructed through editing, Animals considers what people reveal about themselves when placed under the spotlight in desperate circumstances.
It is the feelings and decisions of the characters, in the face of crisis, that creates the most compelling moments in Animals. Much of this is articulated through the supporting role of Dayle Burton, played by Gillian Anderson with her usual understated charisma. An off-grid fixer specialising in guiding wealthy clients through dangerous situations, Burton is cool-headed and pragmatic, reframing events for both the Kimballs and the viewer from a neutral perspective.
Describing her power and leverage as a type of kinetic energy, she quickly establishes herself as a force potentially more dangerous than the unseen kidnapper. Using her philosophy that “all interaction is a function of leverage”, Burton’s presence soon opens up secrets the Kimballs were keeping from each other. Before long, she has broken down so many boundaries that she has them willing to trespass on their purported morals and contemplating her cold offer of having the abductor killed for an additional fee.
In response to her proposal, Mark says “decency is what separates us from the animals”. However, this is coolly met by Burton with the assertion “humans are animals who tell stories”. Burton’s role in the narrative is to highlight the murkiness that lies beneath the polite facade of the Kimballs. Interestingly, Burton’s character also shows how easily beguiled and quick the couple are to hand over their trust (and money) to someone like her based on her professional demeanour, the very thing that Mark is desperately campaigning for.
As twists and turns come hard and fast, Mark’s professionalism wavers in ways Burton’s doesn’t. He is forced to face realities and make decisions that expose his unconscious racism and elitism. Are there lives that matter more than others and what choices will survive public scrutiny? The audience watches as he weighs up his true thoughts and his politically cynical ones. Ultimately, we watch as the political mask comes off and we see the flawed person that his public appearances carefully conceal.
This may make you question why you would want to watch a film about a two-faced politician, particularly when there are already so many real world examples of political corruption that we’re are subjected to on a daily basis. However Animals succeeds in exploring the blurred line between justice and legality well, presenting this moral ambiguity as a universal issue that transcends social hierarchies.
Animals is an engaging film through its dissection of class division, packaged as a fast moving thriller. It is entertaining while doing enough to raise serious questions about the stories political figures present to the world along with those that we may present to one another. (The Conversation)