What are critics saying about Netflix thriller ‘Animals’ starring Ben Affleck and Kerry Washington?

A new thriller titled Animals with a star-studded cast has just been released - but is it a hit or miss?

Directed and produced by Ben Affleck, he also stars in the film alongside Kerry Washington, Steven Yeun, Gillian Anderson, Luis Gerardo Méndez, Adriana Paz, Ray Fisher, Jacob Estrada, and Christopher Woodley.

"When their son (Denny Kimball played by Woodley) is kidnapped, a Los Angeles mayoral candidate (Mark Kimball played by Affleck) and his wife (Abigail Kimball played by Washington) find themselves drawn into a web of deception. As they scramble to raise the ransom payment, they’re forced to make choices – and reveal secrets – that could tear their world apart," the plot synopsis reads.

(L to R) Kerry Washington as Abigail and Ben Affleck as Mark in Animals. Warrick Page/Netflix © 2026.

It's not just the couple who get caught up on the chaos, there's Kimball's aide Sam (Yeun), and a mysterious fixer Dayle Burton (Anderson), along with the family’s housekeeper Cecilia Trujillo (Paz) and her boyfriend Ramon (Méndez).

What are critics saying?

(L to R) Steven Yeun as Sam and Gillian Anderson as Dayle in Animals.Warrick Page/Netflix © 2026.

Animals has been receiving unfavourable reviews from critics and currently sits with a 32 per cent critic score on film and TV review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes. Elsewhere, it got a 5.7 out 10 IMDb rating, and scored a 2.3 out of 5 on Letterboxed.

New York Times's Jeannette Catsoulis said, "Like an inedible gruel made with top-shelf ingredients, Ben Affleck’s 'Animals' whisks its high-value cast into an overwrought script to produce an extraordinarily flat political thriller."

"This is a movie that just wants to get the job done with frictionless likability, with seemingly no one inquiring about why," noted The Guardian's Jesse Hassenger in his two-star review.

"For every piece of drone footage sweeping across LA, every shot that carves out about two feet of space between actors with no sizzle, I kept wishing for more Gillian Anderson, more Gillian Anderson, please," wrote IndieWire's Ryan Lattanzio, grading the film a C-.

Associated Press's Jake Coyle also gave the film two stars, "Affleck is a savvy and thoughtful filmmaker who can deftly weave human stories, genre mechanics and social issues together. But 'Animals' feels narratively underpowered and melodramatically forced."

"The script only gets more daft, inventing sketchy revenge motives for the villains, and requiring some truly idiotic behaviour when it gets to the hostage hand-over, which takes place in the giant storm drains seen in Terminator 2," The Telegraph's Tim Robey shared in his two-star rating.

The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney commented, "There are mysteries in Animals, but the most pressing of them is whether anyone told Affleck that Spike Lee just last year released a zingy reimagining of High and Low, Akira Kurosawa’s masterful marriage of police procedural and domestic drama."

Where can I watch?

(L to R) Kerry Washington as Abigail and Christopher Woodley as Denny in Animals.Warrick Page/Netflix © 2026.

You can now watch Animals on Netflix after the film was released on the streaming platform on October 9.

Why not read...

• What are critics saying about horror ‘Other Mommy’?
• What are critics saying about 'You Can See Everything'?

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