New Trailer for Ben Affleck’s ANIMALS Puts His Family in a Brutal Kidnapping Crisis
Netflix has released the second and final trailer for Animals, a kidnapping thriller directed by and starring Ben Affleck, and it puts a desperate family at the center of a nasty situation where money, politics, and secrets collide.
Affleck plays Los Angeles mayoral candidate Milo Bradford, whose son is kidnapped and Milo and his wife are given only a few hours to come up with the ransom, but there’s one major problem. Most of their money has already been poured into his political campaign.
That forces the couple into some ugly territory as they try to save their son while protecting a carefully constructed public life that could come crashing down around them.
Netflix sums up the situation with a pretty effective hook: “How far would you go to protect your family? Who can you trust?”
The official synopsis offers more: “Power can't protect you. When the son of Los Angeles mayoral candidate Milo Bradford is kidnapped, he and his wife have a few hours to come up with the ransom payment. With most of their money spent on his political campaign, they have to get their hands dirty and expose a side of their lives they never intended to see the light of day.”
Affleck is joined by Kerry Washington, Gillian Anderson, Adriana Paz, Ray Fisher, Christopher Woodley, Matt Gerald, Jacob Estrada, Steven Yeun, and Luis Gerardo Méndez.
Animals marks Affleck’s latest directing effort following Air. His filmmaking career also includes Gone Baby Gone, The Town, Argo, and Live by Night, so a dark crime thriller involving desperate people making increasingly dangerous choices certainly falls into his wheelhouse.
The screenplay comes from Connor O. McIntyre, Billy Ray, and Affleck, with Robert Elswit serving as cinematographer.
Netflix is clearly pushing Animals as an intense emotional thriller in the vein of High and Low, but I’m not sold by the trailers. For all the talent involved, what we’ve seen so far looks surprisingly bland.
Still, Affleck has made some damn good movies as a director, particularly when he’s working with crime, pressure, and morally compromised characters. I’m hoping the finished movie has a lot more bite than the marketing suggests.
Animals opens in select U.S. theaters and begins streaming on Netflix on October 9, 2026.