Ben Affleck and Kerry Washington's Animals Faces Mostly Negative Reviews

Animals brings Ben Affleck back behind the camera and puts him on screen opposite Kerry Washington. The Netflix kidnapping thriller is scheduled for October 9, according to The Daily Beast Latest Articles.

Its crime story has a political setting. The Hollywood Reporter describes a kidnapping unfolding against a wealthy independent candidate's Los Angeles mayoral campaign. Steven Yeun and Gillian Anderson also feature in the cast.

Affleck plays the embattled mayoral candidate, according to IndieWire Movies. That premise gives the film both a personal crisis and a campaign under pressure.

Reviews published on October 8 largely found that the setup did not translate into a satisfying thriller. Deadline Hollywood highlighted the confrontations between Affleck and Washington and described the film as stretched too thin.

The Hollywood Reporter offered a related criticism: the movie contains juicy elements but does less with them than its ingredients suggest it could.

The criticism was sharper at IndieWire Movies, which called the film tedious and said it lacked the visual flair and propulsive storytelling of Affleck's other work. Screen Rant likewise dismissed his return to thrillers as a boring mess, while Forbes called it a shocking misfire.

But the October 8 coverage was not unanimous. Variety Movies described Animals as a nasty, compulsive kidnapping thriller and characterized it as slick, pacy, all-star pulp. That is a substantially warmer assessment than the other reviews provided.

The early critical response is mostly negative, not uniformly so. The recurring complaint is that a promising kidnapping premise and recognizable cast cannot overcome weak execution, whether reviewers focus on storytelling, pacing or the film's unrealized potential.

Variety Movies supplies the clearest counterpoint, finding momentum and appeal in the same crime thriller that several other critics found tedious. The supplied coverage contains no audience response yet.

The next concrete step is the October 9 Netflix release reported by The Daily Beast Latest Articles. That will put Animals before viewers beyond the critics whose reviews currently define the response.