Abhiroop Das
In Netflix’s ‘Animals,’ we follow Los Angeles mayoral candidate Mark Kimball and his wife, Abigail Kimball, whose picture-perfect lives are shattered when their son, Denny, is kidnapped. With nothing but an ominous phone call and a demand for millions of dollars, they are left with no choice but to take an unconventional path in the hopes of scrambling together the money. In the process, though, both Mark and Abigail end up uncovering some truly dark secrets about each other, and, all the while, the kidnapping leads to an even bigger conspiracy. By the end of this Ben Affleck directorial, the line separating the proverbial good guys from the bad begins to thin out, as extreme decisions make way for extreme circumstances. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Animals Plot Synopsis
‘Animals’ begins with Mark Kimball announcing his campaign to become the new mayor of Los Angeles, and from there, we get a glamorized montage of all the promises he makes and all the communities he interacts with. Right after this, though, the story shifts to a dimly lit basement, where a group of masked men appears to be looking into Mark and his family. On the morning of Halloween, Cecilia Trujillo, the Kimball family’s nanny, appeals to Mark’s wife, Abigail, about getting her lover, Ramon, hired. However, the fact that Ramon is an undocumented immigrant makes for bad optics for Mark’s campaign, and the family ultimately refuses.
Meanwhile, Mark sits down with his campaign manager, Sam Allison, to deal with a rather troubling revelation: they are lagging behind in the election simulations by a few points, and the only way out is to pour more money into advertising within the Latino community. As Mark takes another big loan using his inheritance as collateral, we cut to Abigail’s side of the story, learning that she is having a passionate affair with a man named Ron, who urges her to leave Mark and live with him. That night, Mark and Abigail’s son, Denny, invites Ramon’s son, Hector, to go trick or treating with Ceci, but when they don’t come back for quite some time, Abigail grows worried. Her fears soon turn out to be justified, as a man calls Mark, announcing that he has Denny hostage and needs 7 million dollars in return for his safe return.
Too scared to call the police and too broke to come up with the money in the middle of the night, Mark has no choice but to call in a mysterious woman named Dayle Burton, who serves as an underground broker of sorts and requires a strict commission for her services. By the time she arrives with the money, there is another conundrum: Denny is back home, completely safe and sound, which can only mean that the child the men kidnapped is actually Hector. This time, Dayle proposes another option, that of killing the kidnappers before they can run away with the money, and Mark eventually agrees. Things fall apart very quickly at the scene of the exchange, however, as Dayle misjudges the number of kidnappers and ends up getting shot by one of them, before Ramon guns that man down and saves his son.
Animals Ending: Does Mark Kill Dayle? What Happens to the Money?
While ‘Animals’ ends by implicitly confirming that Dayle Burton is dead, or at least out of the picture for good, it does not reveal whether Mark is actually the one to kill her. Given that the gunshot from the kidnappers landed on her chest, there is a good chance that the wound was a fatal one and would take her life regardless of Mark’s interference. However, what makes her final moments especially ambiguous is that we see Mark take a glance at her while she is alive, before turning back. This effectively suggests that Mark chose to leave her to die before dumping her body and redesigning the entire crime scene to fit his agenda. Dayle’s death ironically solves a lot of his problems at once, and he doesn’t exactly hesitate in exploiting her end for his selfish gains.
From the moment that she’s introduced, Dayle seems to have a clear effect on Mark’s psyche, almost as if she inspires him to become increasingly colder and more practical in thought. Abigail even points out that, at one point, Mark almost begins to sound like Dayle, which adds a layer to how their dynamic ends. From the very start, Dayle plays just as big a mind game with Mark as the kidnappers themselves, manipulating him into signing up for murder, just so she can use his words as leverage for extorting money of her own. Though it seems to be too late by the time Mark catches up to it, the attack on Dayle presents itself as a golden opportunity to make amends. After all, the attack itself is a result of Dayle’s misreading of the enemy, and based on what Mark has learned from her, showing vulnerability at such critical moments is indeed a death sentence.
The immediate moments after the attack on Dayle do not exactly follow a linear sequence of events, but jumble the timeline to deliberately leave things in the dark. Overall, though, we can make out the fact that Mark somehow covers up Dayle’s murder and turns himself into the hero of the entire operation. By doing so, he gets full access to the seven million dollars that she arrived with, and that too with no worries of ever paying the sum back. Since Dayle seems to mostly work by herself, no one comes to collect the money either, and this gives Mark free rein to not only use it for his campaign but also pay back the enormous debts he had accumulated in the last few days. Despite holding on to power with an iron grip for the entire film, Dayle suffers a particularly ruthless fall from grace, and fate itself seems to toy with her for it.
Does Mark Become the Mayor? What Happens to Abigail?
With seven million dollars being pumped into his campaign, Mark gets the critical push he wanted and goes on to become the new mayor of Los Angeles. However, there is one detail that has an even greater impact on his voter base than the money, and that is the story he builds out of the kidnapping scandal. Knowing that news of the deaths is bound to leak out one way or another, Mark chooses to weaponize it by rewriting the narrative and getting rid of the personal parts. For starters, he tells the world that the kidnappers’ goal had always been Hector, Ramon’s son, completely omitting the connection to his own son. Next, he lies about the total ransom amount, bringing it down to a few hundred thousand to make it believable. The real twist he introduces, however, is how he frames himself as Hector’s savior.
After getting rid of the remains of Dayle and her sniper, Mark goes on to claim that it was he who shot the three kidnappers with a rifle, and just like that, he is heralded as a hero within the Latino community, and goes on to win the election with a thumping majority. The irony in all of this is that the kidnappers’ original goal was to completely crush Mark’s spirit and humiliate him because of how his actions had hurt several underprivileged communities. The movie makes constant references to how many small businesses were shut down as part of the laws Mark pushed for, but at no point after becoming mayor does Mark even bring that detail up. On the contrary, he seems to have slipped on a mask that he inherited from Dayle, having truly understood what she meant when she described people as animals who can tell stories.
On top of winning the election and becoming the new face of Los Angeles, Mark also manages to save his troubled marriage by winning back Abigail’s affection. Though she was on the verge of leaving him for the person she was having an affair with, the situation seems to have turned for now. The cracks in Mark and Abigail’s relationship ultimately trace back to the mayoral campaign, and how Mark seemingly gave it all his attention, while barely glancing back at his family. The high-stress kidnapping situation, however, seemingly brings them closer to each other, and all it takes is one heart-to-heart conversation for the two to reconcile. That said, it is undeniable that Mark has evolved quite drastically since the shooting climax, and whether that will translate into positive developments in his dynamic with Abigail remains uncertain.
Do Ramon and Hector Leave Los Angeles?
While Mark and his family get all the spoils of the victory at the end of the film, the same cannot be said about Ramon and Hector. After being in mortal peril all this time, the duo has to return to Mexico due to their status as undocumented immigrants. This, of course, is a part of Mark’s larger strategy to tell the world about the kidnapping scandals, and in doing so, he treats Ramon and his family as pawns in a game, knowing that their status as undocumented people would be revealed to the authorities. Though Ramon went through hell and back to bring his son to LA and lead a life here, he is ultimately forced to go back to square one, and that just about perfectly captures the subtle evil that runs through Mark and ultimately defines his character.
Upon learning of his son’s kidnapping, Ramon tells Ceci about his local clan’s culture, where an attack on any one person’s family is interpreted as an attack on the community, prompting the leader to take action. On a symbolic level, this ties directly to Mark, who is attempting to be the leader of his own community. The kidnapping, then, almost serves as a test for what his values truly are, and while he is eventually able to save Hector’s life, it is only with Ramon’s help. Nonetheless, he doesn’t shy away from rewriting the entire story and casting himself as the hero, all the while knowing that it would leave Ramon in a worse position. In the end, only Mark finds himself firmly in control of real power, whereas Ramon, who went through the same emotional ordeals, is pushed further away to the periphery.
Read More: Where Was Netflix’s Animals Filmed? All Shooting Locations
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