Ben Affleck's Netflix crime thriller Animals began streaming on October 9, 2026 — and critics delivered a brutal verdict. The film debuted at just 38% on Rotten Tomatoes, landing firmly in rotten territory despite an A-list cast led by Affleck himself, Kerry Washington and Gillian Anderson.
A kidnapping thriller with a Kurosawa shadow
Animals stars Affleck as Mark Kimball, a Los Angeles mayoral candidate whose political career — and marriage — starts cracking when his young son is kidnapped and held for a multimillion-dollar ransom (reported at $7 million). With campaign-strained finances and no clean way to raise the money, Mark and his wife Abigail (Kerry Washington) must dirty their hands, calling in a mysterious crisis fixer, Dayle Burton (Gillian Anderson).
The film is a loose contemporary reworking of Akira Kurosawa's 1963 crime drama High and Low, relocated to an LA mayoral campaign. Affleck directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Billy Ray and Connor O. McIntyre; the film runs 106 minutes and opened in select U.S. theaters the same day it hit Netflix.
The critical drubbing
The review embargo lifted on October 9 and the numbers were grim: Animals debuted at 38% from just 16 reviews, then bounced into the low-to-mid 40s as more critics weighed in — 42% from 26 reviews, with Wikipedia recording 38% of 39 critics' reviews positive at a 5.4/10 average, and Metacritic assigning 33 out of 100 ("generally unfavorable"). If the score holds, it ranks among Affleck's lowest-rated films as a director, ahead only of 2016's Live by Night (34%) — and a steep fall from Gone Baby Gone (94%), The Town (92%), Argo (96%) and Air (93%).
The complaints were consistent: the New York Times' Jeannette Catsoulis called it an overwrought script producing a flat political thriller; Vulture went further, calling it a catastrophe with disjointed storytelling; RogerEbert.com labeled it Affleck's weakest directing effort; The Daily Beast found it unoriginal and short on suspense; and the Associated Press gave it two out of four stars, calling it underpowered and forced in its melodrama. TheWrap also noted that Affleck has admitted to using AI to make parts of the film — a disclosure that drew its own scrutiny.
The one bright spot: the cast
The ensemble is widely regarded as the movie's silver lining. The Financial Times gave the film 4 stars, crediting the "deft supporting players" — Kerry Washington as Kimball's frantic wife and "a splendidly glacial Gillian Anderson." The supporting cast also includes Steven Yeun, Luis Gerardo Méndez, Adriana Paz and Ray Fisher.
Animals is Affleck's sixth feature as a director and his second straight Netflix film after The Rip earlier this year. It premiered at the Westwood Village Theater in LA on October 1, followed by a Mexico City fan event on October 4 attended by Affleck, Matt Damon and Kerry Washington. Netflix is positioning it as one of the first signs of its first-look deal with Affleck's Artists Equity.
The takeaway: Affleck's return to the crime-thriller genre that made his name behind the camera has landed with a thud from critics — but with the cast earning real praise, audiences get to deliver their own verdict starting today.
Watch: Forbes contributor Erik Kain's video review of Ben Affleck's Animals on Netflix
Music in this post's reel: Kevin MacLeod - Silly Fun (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0
Sources
- Fiction Horizon: Ben Affleck's 'Animals' lands a rotten score as critics turn on his Netflix thriller
- ComingSoon.net: Gillian Anderson & Steven Yeun's divisive new crime movie now streaming on Netflix
- Movieweb: Netflix's new Ben Affleck action thriller deemed a rare misfire
- Wikipedia: Animals (2026 film)