Humans are mysteriously transforming into beasts in Thomas Cailley’s French film The Animal Kingdom. Doctors are baffled about what is causing these mutations but claim that they are learning. That’s little comfort to François (Romain Duris), whose wife, Lana (Florence Deretz, seen only briefly), was forced into a hospital mid-transformation after lashing out at their teenage son, Émile (Paul Kircher). François loyally visits her, even deciding to move across the country to be closer to her after she’s transferred to a new facility specifically for these creatures. Even though she’s now nonverbal and covered in fur, “It’s still her,” François asserts. Émile is far less passionate about maintaining a bond with what’s become of his mother, shrugging off François’ insistence that the boy talk to her because “it’s not like she can understand anyway.”
Despite the film’s fantastical elements and menagerie of computer-generated humanoid animals, Cailley’s script, co-written with Pauline Munier, hinges on the push and pull of the father-and-son relationship. Things go awry quickly, as the transport truck carrying the creatures—who are derisively referred to as “critters” by much of the public—runs off the road, allowing its surviving occupants to escape. François insists on searching for his wife even though people are forbidden from entering the forest, and he drags Émile along with him. Having already uprooted their lives once, the pair begin to settle into their new home and leave some of their clothes hanging from trees in the yard in the hope that Lana will recognize the scent and return to them. Émile attempts to fit in at his new school, but his ability to do so is challenged when he discovers claws creeping out from under his fingernails and his spine beginning to protrude.
Wisely, The Animal Kingdom never attempts to explain the phenomenon that has suddenly gripped the world. These feral, mutant creatures wreak havoc on civilization, both physically and ethically. In France, their presence is often a police matter, such as when an octopus mutant in a hooded sweatshirt thrashes through a supermarket. Along the way, François keeps crossing paths with sympathetic cop Julia (Adèle Exarchopoulos), but she can only be of so much help. And once Émile’s early stages of transformation are discovered by his father—those pesky drains and their tendency to clog with fur and claws—the film’s primary tension lies in father and son doing everything they can to keep it a secret.
In France, critters are rounded up and detained, forcing family members to do whatever they can to hide their mutated loved ones from the public eye. There’s some “Free the creatures” activism, especially since Norway is said to have successfully found a way to coexist with the mutants, but most people are fearful of them. The film never belabors any particular societal aspect, however, and despite a fertile scenario for metaphor, it rarely engages in any commentary, instead maintaining focus on a character-driven story. The CGI is obviously necessary for a film that involves people mutating into everything from pangolins to giant, spindly insects, but at times it’s so obviously CGI that it becomes distracting. But The Animal Kingdom still often offers compelling imagery, especially a scene involving stilt-walkers chasing a creature through a cornfield a night.
What easily could’ve delved into Cronenbergian body horror remains firmly planted in magical realism. Émile may pull out the occasional fingernail or tooth, but the physical aspects of the transformation are overshadowed by the emotional impact on both Émile and François, the latter of who will have to deal with losing a loved one all over again. When Émile, drawn to the forest, befriends a mid-transformation birdman named Fix (Tom Mercier) who’s trying his damnedest to learn to fly, we are given more insight into the mutations, as Fix still retains some ability to speak. The transition from human to animal is a gradual one, and while this, too, could be treated as an analogy for the loss of function brought on by degenerative disease, it’s never quite handled that way. In the end, The Animal Kingdom centers on human emotion amid a fantastical premise that’s otherwise presented with the same kind of stark indifference as Mother Nature herself.
Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing
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