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Animals Reviews
Animals is a tough, but poetic film. It's about two drug addicts living in a car, in love, trapped in their habits, and fighting to change their ways.
| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 31, 2021
A deeply human and heartbreaking love story.
| Oct 31, 2019
Director Collin Schiffli keeps a tight focus on character, as the couple's plight becomes increasingly dire.
| Nov 2, 2016
It hits enough unexpected notes, both of damnation and redemption, that it stands above most of its contemporaries in the subgenre.
| Original Score: B | Feb 22, 2016
Homeless con artists ply their trade in petty crime survival saga.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 24, 2015
What separates Animals from its twitchier brethren is a keen sense of place.
| Original Score: B | May 28, 2015
"Animals" is a stark, brilliant, uncompromising, beautifully acted piece of work.
Full Review | May 22, 2015
The couple's doomed romance feels familiar from numerous other films about addiction, and the movie is downright bad whenever it aspires to visual poetry.
| May 21, 2015
This kind of movie can boost the fortunes of little-known actors, and it should do that for Dastmalchian and Shaw.
| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 15, 2015
There's no shortage of indie pictures that burrow into the cold realities of drug dependency. But "Animals," like the best of these films, moves beyond mere cautionary tale.
| Original Score: 3/4 | May 15, 2015
This is not a "slippery slope" movie, like other stories about addicts. In "Animals," they are already at the bottom of the slope.
| Original Score: 3/4 | May 15, 2015
It's gritty and grim, but "Animals" is also a gripping portrait of young junkies in love.
| May 14, 2015
The trajectory of "Animals" is obvious in the opening minutes of this numbing if well-acted junkie drama.
| Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 14, 2015
Mr. Schiffli shoots in a fluid style, tweaking colors and focus to register changes in perception and feeling.
| May 14, 2015
The way Schiffli blends grim reality with drug-induced fantasy is fascinating.
| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 14, 2015
Watching two junkies in love kick heroin alone is its own kind of heartbreaking, as the desperation of this need is trumped only by their need for each other.
| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 14, 2015
The actors do their best to bring humanity to the junkie clichs, assisted by their character-actor mix of familiarity and anonymity.
| Original Score: C+ | May 14, 2015
Dastmalchian and Shaw are both superb as lovers whose devotion to each other remains unshaken by their otherwise all-encompassing addiction.
| Original Score: 3/5 | May 13, 2015
The premise - homeless drug addicts in love - is depressing, but as directed by Collin Schiffli, the film has warmth and humor, ultimately conveying a sense of redemptive hope that Dastmalchian likely brings to the table.
| May 12, 2015