While there's a famous song called "Animal" by Def Leppard (it's not bad! okay - the verse kind of sucks, but the chorus is good stuff) - it's a little amazing that this is the first Animal horror movie. It's such an obvious title, just one step away from "Monster," or whatever. To be fair, we do have "Animals" - that's next for me, I guess.
But the topic at hand... Animal is such a simple, straight forward title, and our Animal is a simple, obvious monster movie - played straight with very little fuss. A group of teenagers are attacked in the woods by a blood-thirsty creature, and then chased and trapped in a house with three adults who were already cornered there. The titular animal stalks around the outside, bashing on the makeshift barricades, looking for a weak spot and hoping to make these folks its next meal. That's enough for a movie, right?
The first thing I noticed (and loved) about Animal is that our creature is a practical, man-in-suit creation. At this point, going all practical is a pretty bold statement against all of the CGI crap that we have nowadays, and it's one that I can't help but support. And it makes Animal sooooo much better. Yes, you know it's a man in a costume, but at least it is actually present. It's a pretty solid design too - think a kind of lanky guy with a big rat skull head and giant rodent like-teeth and claws. Look at it on your queue on Netflix - he's well represented there. As the title implies, it's clearly an animal (it can't talk and doesn't seem very intelligent), but there is no one reference point for it. You never really get any backstory for it either. It's just there and wants to kill people - and that's enough. So it does feel a bit disingenuous for giving a movie a pass based solely on the fact that the monster is non-CGI and looks cool. But I don't care. We need more like this! The creature is well shot and looks good in motion too - you see him a lot, but the way it's filmed you never see the seams, as it were. Animal just hit the right buttons for me.
Also, Joey Lauren Adams is in it. I haven't seen anything from her in about 15 years (but I must have not been paying attention, because she's been in a lot of stuff). She gets top billing (and is the only "name"), but the credits are conveniently in alphabetical order. In the character depth chart, she's way near the bottom, second only to a character who dies in the first few minutes. She's serviceable in the role, which is pretty much par for the course here. No one is that good, no one is that bad. Everyone just is.
Story-wise? There's an animal, and it wants in. That's pretty much it. There's a little bit of tension wrung from the fact that there is one "bad guy" in the house - he basically wants to sacrifice a person so the rest of the group can escape. Everyone else is all "no way." His character is the source of what little surprises Animal has to offer. Also, there are a couple of overly dramatic story lines that are dropped just as quickly as they are presented, and offer little more than a quick "WTF?" and a minute or two of extra padding.
I guess one thing Animal does have going for it is diversity. A white man and black woman play brother and sister (take that, Fant4stic Four!), and the rest of the cast is more diverse than usual, including a semi-flamboyant gay character who provides most of the comic relief, but not really in an offensive way.
But other than a cool looking monster, what matters in a movie like this is the attacks - and they are just okay here. The gore is nothing special (blood and whatnot flying in from offscreen - but usually *lots* of it), and there aren't any intense prosthetic effects or anything like that. There are some good jump scares, and some of the scenes where our characters are trying to distract the creature are moderately tense. But mostly, I just liked watching the creature in action. You see him a lot, and he looks good in just about every shot. There's definitely some creative camera work/angles to keep parts of him hidden, but overall it works well. And again, it warms my heart seeing a monster that is this practical and this well done...
So honestly? Animal is a competently-made, straight forward monster movie. The monster is really all it has going for it, but sometimes that is enough. And here? It is, but barely.
I would recommend this movie.
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