Drug addiction movies that I can recall often depict the characters in a crazy state to get their fix so they can have the best trip ever. These drug films don't often show the hunger for the drug fix that Collin Schiffli's Animals explores. Our heroes, Jude and Bobbi, need to eat, sleep and get heroin. They need it to survive and they can't get it alone. So they stick together. One pulls the other down and together they crash and burn. It's pretty sad
But Animals is charming. Jude and Bobbi are pretty fun to hang out with. That's what it feels like, hanging out with a pretty cool couple. But when they aren't on their fix, they fall into a pretty depressing state. Schiffli does a good job balancing the tone of the film. David Dastmalchian is so charming (who would have thought after playing such creepy characters in Prisoners and Dark Knight?). Kim Shaw is amazing! She kept making me want to cry. How could someone so beautiful and sweet like Bobbi fall into a situation like this? The problem points to Dastmalchian's Jude!
Dastmalchian wrote this from his true life as a former heroin addict and it makes the experience all the more rewarding. I've been hearing some people call Animals a clichéd drug movie. I think that viewpoint makes you realize how addiction is still a problem and drug films haven't really shown it like this. Again, most drug films show the fun of the fix before the characters crash and burn. This film shows the reality of it.
PS – This indie film is low budget and it doesn't look low budget at all! This is the game- changing movie that could have Hollywood running for their money. If an independent filmmaker such as Collin Schiffli (like David Robert Mitchell with It Follows) can make a low budget film that looks and feels as big as a studio movie, then there is a change on the horizon for the studio system.
