Animals | Film Review

 

When their son is taken hostage, mayoral candidate Mark Kimball (Ben Affleck) and his wife Abigail (Kerry Washington) must do whatever it takes to get him back.

I was really looking forward to this movie. Not only am I a huge fan of Ben Affleck both as an actor and a director, but I'm also a fan of Ray Fisher and make sure to see whatever he does, so I was aware of this movie long before it came out.

And I ended up being hugely disappointed with it.

It has a really great cast. Every single actor has a great track record and with a great script, could have done so much with the characters in this movie.

But there were too many issues with the movie to allow any of them to give great performances.

The pacing doesn't work, everything happens too quickly. The son is taken before we really know what's happening, and when the story starts to twist and turn, it just doesn't feel like it makes sense or has earned its twists.

We never really get to know the characters. And for a movie like this to work, we really need to be integrated with the family; we need to care about them, feel like we're one of them. But the distance between the characters and the audience is so great that it affects the entirety of the film in a negative way.

And then there's the twists themselves. The first removed most of the movie's stakes in a weird way that makes you care so much less about what happens.

The movie can't decide what or who it wants us to care about, so we care about no one and nothing.

Some of the characters needed bigger roles for this to work. It's fine having the two main characters, but if no one else has much to do, the story falls apart because the main characters aren't strong enough to carry it.

And in addition to all of that, the story actually becomes boring, which is crazy when there is initially so much to work with. Not much happens from the kidnapping to the end, and what does happen isn't great to watch.

So overall, this movie was just a huge disappointment, particularly because of how much I was looking forward to it. There was so much potential, it had great actors and a great director, so it doesn't make sense that this ended up being the end product.

4/10