What If Humans Suddenly Switched Species?

As far as high concepts scenarios go, Thomas Cailley’s The Animal Kingdom has been blessed with a primo what-if premise: France is in the middle of a pandemic. (No, not that one.) A good deal of the population has been stricken with what doctors and scientists have been calling a “mutation.” Whether it’s a natural evolution or some sort of devolution caused by man-made factors is anyone’s guess. But the symptoms are basically a slow, steady transformation into …an animal.

It could be a bird, like the man who François (Romain Duris) and Émile (Paul Kircher, a.k.a. the who-was-that?! lead from 2022’s Winter Boy) see escaping from an ambulance during a traffic jam. He’s only partway through his avian level-up, though he’s sprouted what appears to be full-blown eagle wings. It could be something more bear-like, which is what’s happened to Émile’s mother. She’s been institutionalized against François’ wishes, yet as the faint scar on the side of their son’s face attests, it was out of necessity — she was beginning to lose control of her instincts. Or it might be a squid, a chameleon, a walrus or an anteater, all of whom cross the duo’s path as they relocate from Paris to the countryside. Mom is about to be moved to a facility down south, and they want to be closer to monitor her state of being.

There’s no sign of a cure. No one is even sure how or why this began happening. All people can do is cross their fingers that their friends and loved ones suffering from this malady don’t lose their identity entirely, and hoping that the prejudices of those who view these “beasts” as threats don’t bring result in violence and harm. The second part is why François and Émile don’t talk about his mother, and why they smile politely when their new neighbors say offensive things about “those monsters.” When a fellow student (Billie Blain) at Émile’s new school asks about his parents, he tells her that his father works as a cook at the popular restaurant by the lake, and his mother is dead.

An accident happens while Mom is being transferred, however, and she and her fellow half-human, half-animal patients escape into the woods near the center. A cop named Julia (Blue Is the Warmest Color‘s Adele Exarchopoulos) who’s sympathetic to the cause — when a colleague calls them “creatures,” she corrects him by saying they’re “victims” — begins helping them search for her on the sly when the military is called in. Then Émile begins exhibiting some strange behavior. He’s having trouble keeping his balance. Everything seems louder than usual. And there seem to be talons growing under fingernails, and he’s developed hair on his arms and back. Actually, it’s more like a fine pelt of fur….

Part dystopian nightmare and part PETA-friendly plea for tolerance — as a well as a coming-of-age movie with a fairy-tale-like sheen — The Animal Kingdom may have the metaphorical subtlety of an early Stan Lee/Jack Kirby X-Men comic storyline. Yet this also has the benefit of a set-up that feels like it can pivot anywhere quickly, whether it’s gentle comedy, jump-scare horror, or high-stakes family drama. The VFX around the hybrid characters somehow seem both crude and cutting edge in an offbeat way; the wobbliness actually adds a sense of oddness that benefits the instability of the situation with no end in sight and the movie’s gently WTF vibe overall. You wouldn’t call the movie “realistic,” yet these half-animal, half-human characters aren’t treated as freaks by the filmmakers. There’s a sense of all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small being worthy of life, despite what the film’s resident bigots and bullies might think.

What really anchors this parable about what makes us human — and what defines humanity: our biology or our empathy? — is Kircher, a young actor who gives the sort of gradually shifting, constantly rebooting physical performance that’s needed to sell Émile’s journey from boy to, ah, wolf-man. There’s an incredible attention to detail in the way that this sullen teen’s sense of his own body goes from natural awkwardness to something instinctual, how his feelings about what’s going on range from fear and anger to something like pride. Duris and Exarchopoulos are big names in French cinema, yet they both know when to stand back and support their costar in what’s genuinely a breakthrough turn (in more ways than one). Come for the way this film twists a disaster-movie premise into sociological commentary while still bringing the weirdness. Stay for how Kircher and Duris embed a father-son story into the fantastical elements, and transform a far-out tale of genetics run amuck into an elegy about the pain of letting go.