Animals (2026) Review: Affleck's Taut Kidnapping Thriller

Mark Kimball (Affleck) is running for mayor of Los Angeles, and by the time we meet him, the campaign has swallowed nearly everything - the savings, the equity, the family's sense of normalcy. That's when the call comes. His son has been taken, and whoever has him wants money the Kimballs simply don't have on hand. What follows unfolds across a single evening: Mark and his wife Abigail (Washington) racing against a clock, scraping together a ransom from sources neither of them is proud of, and discovering just how much of Mark's political machine was built on favors he never disclosed to his family. The script, working in the thriller-drama register, keeps the geography tight and the tension internal as much as external. There's no mastermind monologue waiting at the end, and that's largely to the film's credit.

The smartest decision "Animals" makes is refusing to turn Mark into a hero in the middle of a redemption arc. He's a man who mortgaged his family for a shot at power, and Affleck plays him with a flinty, exhausted narcissism that never tips into caricature. It's a performance built on small humiliations - the way he flinches when Abigail does the math out loud, the way he still instinctively reaches for the campaign donor list when he needs a lifeline. Washington gets the better role and knows it. Abigail is the one who has been kept in the dark, and Washington lets the audience watch her recalibrate from panic to fury to something colder and more calculating as the hours burn off. There's a scene late in the second act where she stops asking her husband questions and starts issuing instructions, and it lands like a slap.

Affleck the director keeps things lean. The film runs just over an hour and forty minutes, and it moves with the economy of someone who has directed action before and doesn't need to show off. The camera stays close, the score stays out of the way, and the L.A. settings - mostly unglamorous back offices, parking structures, a hillside house that suddenly feels like a trap - do quiet thematic work about who actually holds power in this city. The supporting cast is sturdy without being showy. Steven Yeun brings a coiled, ambiguous energy to an early scene that sets the plot's moral terms, Gillian Anderson makes the most of a handful of appearances as a political operator with her own ledger of sins, and Luis Gerardo Méndez and Adriana Paz add texture to the film's shadier corners.

Where the movie stumbles is in the final stretch, when the screenplay starts reaching for thematic closure it hasn't quite earned. A kidnapping thriller doesn't need to explain the moral universe it just spent 90 minutes dramatizing, and one late monologue spells out the film's thesis about political ambition with a bluntness that undercuts the restraint everywhere else. The tension also leaks out of the ending faster than it should - the resolution arrives, and then the movie keeps talking. At 106 minutes, it's tight enough that this doesn't sink it, but it keeps "Animals" in solid rather than exceptional territory.

It's also worth noting that the film isn't trying to be a whodunit. Anyone looking for a puzzle-box mystery will be disappointed; the movie is more interested in what a marriage looks like when the mask comes off. On that front, it delivers.

Pros

• Kerry Washington's performance is the engine of the film - sharp, wounded, and increasingly dangerous.
• Affleck directs with restraint, favoring pressure over spectacle.
• The single-night structure creates genuine, sustained tension.
• Strong supporting work from Steven Yeun and Gillian Anderson.

Cons

• A late monologue over-explains themes the film already dramatized.
• The final act loses momentum after the central conflict resolves.
• Some political-satire elements feel underdeveloped.

"Animals" is a well-crafted, admirably adult thriller that understands a simple truth: the scariest thing in a ransom story isn't the kidnapper, it's the moment a spouse realizes they never actually knew the person beside them. Affleck and Washington make that realization hurt, and the film's lean 106 minutes mostly earn their runtime. It won't be remembered as Affleck's best work behind the camera, and the closing scenes fumble some of what came before, but for a Friday-night October release aimed at grown-ups, it's a genuinely gripping watch. Worth the ticket - just don't expect to like either Kimball by the time the credits roll.