Ben Affleck’s Animals is now on Netflix: his lowest-rated film as director
Ben Affleck’s Netflix film Animals premiered on October 9, 2026, and it’s brought him the worst reviews of his directing career. At the moment, the film is sitting in the mid-30% range on Rotten Tomatoes, below 2016’s Live by Night and far behind the better-received Affleck-directed films Gone Baby Gone, The Town, and Argo. Critics have described Animals as underwritten, low on tension, and too melodramatic to work either as the political drama or the kidnapping thriller its premise seems to promise.
In Animals, Affleck plays a Los Angeles mayoral candidate whose son is kidnapped, throwing both his family life and his public image into chaos. The cast includes Kerry Washington, Steven Yeun, Gillian Anderson, and Ray Fisher, and the setup draws from Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low. Still, a lot of reviews have compared Animals unfavorably to Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, which holds an 83% score on Rotten Tomatoes. One of the few elements that’s gotten consistently warmer notices is Anderson’s fixer.
The split between reception and viewership is hard to miss if you track both critics and audiences. Animals has an audience score of about 41% on Rotten Tomatoes, yet it still became Netflix’s most-watched film globally and reportedly reached No. 1 in 79 countries. That’s a good snapshot of how streaming success and critical approval don’t always move together. You can stream Animals on Netflix now.
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