Ben Affleck’s transition to working behind the camera is one that did his career a lot of favors. By the mid-2000s, his acting career had taken a shaky shift. After a streak of mediocre films and one big box office failure in 2003 notoriously known as Gigli, by 2007, he decided he was going to direct. His filmmaking career up to this point has shown a consistent streak. From his 2007 directorial debut Gone Baby Gone to his Best Picture-winning film Argo, to his most recent biopic on the creation of the Air Jordan shoe for Nike, Air, not only has his filmmaking career brought him revitalized notoriety in a creative medium, it has even allowed him to get more meaningful roles in front of it.
With his sixth directorial feature Animals, which is now streaming on Netflix, I can wholeheartedly state that the streak has hit a bump. He bit the Netflix bait. It feels like he did a double feature of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low and the 1996 kidnapping thriller Ransom, and as a result contributed to making a film that borrows a lot from both of these influences, working to mask its lack of originality and creativity by exploring themes in a lazy and surface-level manner.
Affleck plays an LA mayoral candidate who becomes desperate when he realizes his chances of winning the election are getting slimmer by the day. Desperate financial decisions lead to his own internal conflict, but just days before the election, looking to get the vote to swing his way, a very complicated matter occurs when someone calls claiming to have kidnapped his son. The direction it quickly takes and its two respective halves absolutely reflect the direct adaptation of ideas. It’s taking from the two films that influenced it. At various points, it becomes all too obvious.
A big part of me feels there might have been a script initially written for this that would constitute a film with a runtime of around 130 to 135 minutes, but an awareness of the short attention span of the devout Netflix movie viewer came to fruition. Even Netflix knows that people who devoutly watch their movies usually spend most of their time on their phones. So why dive into detailed extensions of different angles within the narrative if you know your audience is not going to be giving it their full attention?
The characters are thinly written, the acting feels like a soap opera, and the way all of its plot’s events play out just feels surface-level, lazy, and lackluster, with the exploration of what are intended to be its deeper themes becoming absolutely eye-rolling. Even greats present in this film like Gillian Anderson, Kerry Washington, and Steven Yeun are completely aware that they don’t have to make much of an effort in this film. They’re drawn in by their paychecks and do the most minimal work possible to connect their characters with the audience.
One last aspect I really need to comment on here is the fact that LA-set movies just do not feel like LA movies anymore. Having lived in LA for a number of years and having grown up with movies that explore the majestic grit of the city, I feel the magic is gone in that regard. Growing up, LA always looked like a fascinating but scary place. While sections of Los Angeles are very identifiable in this film, the city just starts to look too polished when it comes to its exploration in modern cinema.
This is not only Ben Affleck’s worst directorial feature, it earns that merit by a wide margin. I almost feel like modern surface-level viewers will not even be able to remotely identify the two films that this film is directly lifting its ideas from. Netflix original movies draw their audience in with the talent present. Animals is nothing short of exemplifying that. This is another Netflix original movie that lazily offers easily accessible entertainment from the comfort of one’s own home, promising a theatrical studio-level film that checks every box of what just about every Netflix original movie is… a shiny package with empty contents.
