‘Animals’ ending explained: Does Mark ultimately become the mayor?
Ben Affleck’s Animals on Netflix clearly distinguishes between the good guys and the bad guys at the start, only to blur every line by the end.
The gripping thriller opens with Mark Kimball’s mayoral campaign announcement in Los Angeles, before quietly taking viewers to a dimly lit basement where masked men seem to be looking into him and his family. But the real game begins on Halloween morning, when the Kimball family nanny, Cecilia, is seen requesting Mark’s wife, Abigail, to hire her partner, Ramon, an undocumented immigrant. Since it may not look good for Mark’s campaign, she refuses Cecilia’s appeal.
But that night, Mark and Abigail’s son, Denny, invites Ramon’s son, Hector, to go trick-or-treating with Cecilia. What follows next is a parent’s worst nightmare. When they don’t return for long enough, Mark receives a call informing him that the caller has Denny hostage, and in exchange for his safe return, they need $7million in ransom.
Pushed against the wall and too broke to come up with that kind of cash overnight, Mark turns to Dayle Burton, a loan shark who promises the money for a $1.4million service fee. However, by the time Dayle arrives with the ransom money, Denny returns home, suggesting the kidnappers picked Hector instead of Mark’s son since they were wearing the same costume. But amid all this, does Mark eventually become the mayor?
Does Mark become the mayor in Animals?
Well, to answer whether Mark Kimball gets what he wants in Animals, we have to rewind a bit. Things may not look good for Mark at the start of the film, but it doesn’t stay that way till the end. Upon realising that Hector is held hostage, Dayle suggests they kill the kidnappers before running with the money and Mark, surprisingly, agrees, despite the risky nature of the mission. Although the first part of the act goes exactly as planned in the scene of exchange, Dayle is caught off-guard by a third shooter, who guns her down.
While the Netflix film doesn’t reveal who the third shooter is, Ramon ultimately takes him down with Mark’s grandfather’s rifle. Dayle doesn’t die immediately, but Mark doesn’t attend to her, which ultimately solves a lot of problems. Not only does her death absolve him of the need to pay back the debt, but it also provides him with an opportunity to reconstruct the kidnapping scandal to play it in his mayoral campaign’s favour.
Fully aware the kidnapping scoop will leak sooner or later, Mark weaponises it by convincing the public the target was always Hector, Ramon’s son, tuning down the ransom amount to make it more believable. But the cherry on top is the revelation that he was Hector’s saviour who single-handedly shot the three kidnappers with a rifle, making him the ultimate hero of the story, a selfless one at that.
Mark Kimball wins the voter base with a story that not only makes him a mayor but also rekindles his marriage with Abigail, who had been having an intense affair at the start of the movie. As for Ramon and Hector? They are seen leaving for Mexico with a bag full of cash due to their undocumented immigrant status, clearly underscoring the cost of good vs evil.