Ben Affleck's Animals: A Secret Remake of a Classic Crime Thriller
Devin Meenan
Friday, October 9, 2026, 7:00 PM UTC
(5 min read)
This article contains spoilers for "Animals."
A wealthy man's son is kidnapped with a hefty ransom attached. The choice seems straightforward—but his funds are tied up in an investment. From there, things get even more complicated when it's revealed the kidnapper has taken the son of a wealthy man's employee. After opting for the honorable route, our protagonist must deliver the ransom himself.
So, which film am I referring to: Akira Kurosawa's "High and Low" or Ben Affleck's Netflix thriller Animals?
That's a trick question! As many reviews have pointed out, Animals plays like a remake of "High and Low." Interestingly, an Americanized version of "High and Low" was released last year: Spike Lee and Denzel Washington's "Highest 2 Lowest."
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Affleck (who co-wrote the Animals script with Connor O. McIntyre and Billy Ray) claimed never to have seen "High and Low." Yet, he delayed Animals' production to avoid comparisons to "Highest 2 Lowest." Similar to Affleck's 2010 excellent bank robbery drama The Town, which feels like "Heat: Boston Edition," watching Animals will inevitably draw comparisons to other films.
Animals stars Affleck as Mark Kimball, an ambitious lawyer running for mayor of Los Angeles. His campaign takes a dramatic turn when, on Halloween night (and Election Day eve), a kidnapper calls. "High and Low" is a biting political film centered around social class. Casting Mark as a politician aligns with this, especially since the kidnapped child is the son of Ramon (Luis Gerardo Méndez), an undocumented Mexican immigrant.
Does Animals live up to its promising—yet borrowed—premise and the comparisons it invites?
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Animals feels like an unauthorized remake of Akira Kurosawa's "High and Low."
Now, High and Low itself is an adaptation of Ed McBain's 1959 procedural novel King's Ransom. That in itself speaks to the universal and undeniably exciting nature of its premise. Yet, given Akira Kurosawa's flawless execution, why try again?
In High and Low, the protagonist is Kingo Gondo (Toshirō Mifune), a businessman planning a leveraged buyout of his shoe manufacturing company. The first half of the film takes place entirely within Gondo's hilltop mansion. The blocking in High and Low remains ready-made for film school, with Kurosawa transforming Gondo's living room into a theater stage. Characters' relationships and thoughts can be tracked purely from their screen movement.
In Animals, however, Affleck favors close-ups of characters shouting into cell phones, stitched together with whip pans.
The biggest divergence from High and Low is the introduction of a new character. Instead of calling the police, Mark's campaign manager Sam (underutilized Steven Yeun) contacts an enigmatic fixer, Dayle Burton (Gillian Anderson). Like a platinum blonde Winston Wolfe, Dayle solves expensive and incriminating problems for a hefty fee. The purpose of this character shift is unclear.