Kerry Washington's R-Rated, 108-Minute Thriller Is Officially Netflix's Biggest Streaming Hit

Ben Affleck has directed some standout films in his time, from "Argo" to "The Town." Unfortunately, despite boasting a solid cast that includes "Scandal" star Kerry Washington, his latest effort, "Animals," is a bit of a letdown. But that doesn't seem to have stopped Netflix users from streaming this crime thriller en masse, sending "Animals" to the top of the streamer's charts in the process.

As well as directing, Affleck stars in "Animals" as lawyer and Los Angeles mayoral candidate Mark Kimball, who's sunk every penny he has into his election bid. Meanwhile his wife, Abigail Kimball (Washington) is having an affair with a hunky UCLA teacher played by Ray Fisher (yes, "Animals" is a DC Extended Universe reunion for Affleck and Fisher). After the couples' son disappears while trick or treating, they're contacted by a mysterious individual who demands $7 million dollars for his return. With Kimball having drained his savings, he calls on an equally mysterious fixer played by Gillian Anderson, who forces the Kimballs to reveal their dark secrets.

While the premise sounds intriguing enough, the film itself is oddly flat, both in terms of the events therein and the look of this thing, which resembles pretty much every muddy, lifeless streaming movie Netflix has delivered over the past decade. None of that, however, has prevented the film from performing well on the streamer. At the time of writing "Animals" is number one on the Netflix movies chart.

In January 2026, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's grim crime thriller "The Rip" became a massive success for Netflix. As such, it was always to be expected that "Animals" would do well. Even without taking "The Rip" into account, a new Ben Affleck movie on Netflix is guaranteed to chart. But "Animals" is a bonafide global mega-hit.

According to streaming viewership tracker FlixPatrol, Affleck and Kerry Washington's thriller has been the number one most-watched movie on Netflix in the United States since its release on October 9, 2026. The film debuted in the charts at number one on October 10 and has remained there since. But there's even more to this success story. At the time of writing, "Animals" is number one in 78 countries. Even more impressive, the film has been in the top spot since its release in 64 of those countries — a rare feat. Overall, "Animals" is charting in 93 countries, making it yet another major success for Affleck.

That might help take the edge of the critical response, which thus far has been pretty dire. "Animals" holds a 31% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, with Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com calling it "easily Affleck's worst directorial effort." Meanwhile, /Film's Chris Evangelista found "Animals" to be a thriller without many thrills, and Peter Travers wondered if someone was "holding a gun to Ben Affleck's head to make this kidnap clunker."

Things weren't looking too good for "Animals" when a large part of the film's promotion seemed to center around the fact that Ben Affleck had used his AI technology, InterPositive, during the making of the film. Supposedly, this is not the ethically-compromised generative AI that's dominating our culture today, but a more subtle form of the technology that simply gives filmmakers more control over post-processing. But it all sounded a little shady and Affleck's refusal to say exactly what he used it for didn't really help.

When the film arrived, however, AI seemed to be the least of its problems. While Affleck and Washington do manage to transcend the material in several scenes wherein their emotions get the better of them, for the most part they don't have much chemistry. The film is also packed with plot points that go nowhere, and poor Gillian Anderson is forced to shuffle around the Kimballs' home for large portions of the movie while Affleck and Washington's couple decide what they're going to do next.

Unfortunately, with the film being so successful, we're almost guaranteed to get more of this stuff in the future. Netflix has put out some great films in 2026, but this ain't one of them and many of the good ones simply didn't get the attention "Animals" did. Hopefully, when Affleck returns with his next Netflix project, it's a heck of a lot better.