Animals

Akira Kurosawa once made a film called High and Low, based on a novel, King’s Ransom, by the author Evan Hunter. In 2025, Spike Lee retold the story, as Highest 2 Lowest, and in 2026, Ben Affleck seemingly was inspired to retell the story himself, this time without citing what must have been at least a source, and calling it Animals. The problem here is that Affleck, a capable film maker, has made the worst film he’s been involved in since Gigli.

There is no energy, intelligence or purpose. The dialogue is stiffer than a starch factory and the cast is utterly unengaged. Here is a film that makes Gillian Anderson look like one of the great skunk artists in the world of film and television. Her accent here does not work, because her delivery seems to denote nothing of interest or importance. This film wastes her with lines that would embarrass Ed Wood Jr. Here is a film that ought to have at least had some energy.

Instead, it comes off as emptiness. Storm and fury signifying nothing. We are given no reason to invest in these characters before they are thrust into the action, and no reason to care about them. We do not see them really interacting with one another without shouting or being awkward. While the purpose is to eventually show growth and keep a tension about the proceedings regarding potential reconciliations, the audience is denied the opportunity to meet these characters as anything other than plot devices with no soul.

Affleck knows how to write a script and build a world, as seen in Argo, The Town and Good Will Hunting. Here, however, none of his typical sensibilities seem to be on display or at the ready. This is a film with a series of uninspired “set pieces” that ultimately ring hollow, relying far too much on “twists” that anyone with half a pulse will see coming a mile away. Indeed, anyone could likely have written a punchier script, one where those red herrings turned out to be the real deal. If a writer does not know what isn’t working, that is a very bad sign.

One real problem here is that the script, from three writers, seems to have been cobbled together without consideration from many drafts. Why is the wife doing what she is doing? Is there something else going on with the manager? Might this all have something to do with the candidate’s father? These are not even questions the film asks explicitly, but ponderings that occurred to this reviewer while seeing the film. Any number of other outcomes would have been more satisfying than this burnt out husk of a nothing burger.

A film wasting the talents of Ben Affleck, Kerry Washington, Gillian Anderson, Ray Fisher and Steven Yeun, among others, deserves scorn, not praise. There is so much skill and talent here that is a deadly kind of miracle it is this unwatchable. It is a film with several starts and quite a few endings, not of which make sense and all of which strain credulity. This is not to say it is the worst thing Affleck has made, but it is to say it is his most disappointing work in decades. Why should we care, in any way, about such horrible people? Even Blue Velvet managed to make Frank Booth, one of the most vile creatures ever to fill the screen, someone of interest. We did not “care” about him but we wanted to know what happened next. In this film, you are merely happy if the kids come out safely but likely will not care if the adults all drown in the ocean. A monumental failure on every level.