Only the Animals Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

Only the Animals Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 24, 2022

Only the Animals begins with a dark screen and what sounds like a blood curdling but still rather weird scream, which, once actual imagery begins, turns out to be the bleat of a goat which has been hog (goat?) tied and is (I kid you not) riding piggy back on an African boy tooling his bike down a street (see screenshot 16). That arresting image gets Only the Animals off to a rather memorable start, but the film then segues rather abruptly from Africa to a wintry France, where there is a home care aide named Alice (Laure Calamy) who is driving through a frostbitten environment, ultimately ending up at an isolated farmhouse, where she checks in on a possibly on the spectrum client named Joseph (Damien Bonnard). That "checking in" includes some sex, which seems to satisfy Alice more than it does the somewhat confused looking Joseph, and Alice soon departs, driving again across a barren, snowy landscape where she drives past what looks like an abandoned car, completely covered in frost. Back at her own farm, she has a few cursory interchanges with her husband Michel (Denis Ménochet), who seems intent on dealing with "accounts" he's managing on his computer, rather than really interacting with his wife. Meanwhile, Alice has turned on the television and the news is reporting the mysterious disappearance of a woman named Evelyne Ducat (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), who of course owned the car that Alice had spied. Soon enough local policeman Cedric (Bastien Bouillion) is investigating the disappearance, and Alice, Michel and Joseph are among the presumed suspects, even if Cedric doesn't want to overtly announce that fact.

The above summary gives the broadest possible outlines of a film which, kind of like Cedric, keeps its cards fairly close to its vest. The fact that an actress' name is given above in the role of the missing woman may indicate, if only subliminally, that the film has some structural artifices which start to unspool and which involve both flashbacks and different points of view as to what has transpired. As such, the film may remind some of a kind of patently bizarre mashup of certain elements from Fargo and Rashomon, though in tone Only the Animals is inarguably much closer to the Kurosawa classic than the Coen Brothers' alternately horrifying and comical outing.

Only the Animals is split into various named "chapters" that follow the story from the named individual's point of view, though the "overlapping" version(s) of events is not as varying as the widely disparate accounts in Rashomon, and in fact Only the Animals tends to offer more sudden shocks of realization about what something seen in a previous vignette actually means, rather than the film positing differing "meanings". The underlying mystery of what did or did not happen to Evelyne takes a number of rather unexpected twists and turns, and without spoiling some of the connections between characters that are ultimately revealed, suffice it to say that the film manages to get from France to Africa via something akin to the shenanigans portrayed in Catfish, which, considering the fact that Fargo and Rashomon have already been mentioned as cinematic referents, may offer some clue as to the twists and turns the tale takes. That African element introduces the character of Armand (Guy Roger “Bibisse” N’Drin), the young man seen transporting the goat in the film's amazing opening moments, and who has a rather unexpected tether to one of the French characters.

Plays like Edward Albee's Zoo Story or songs like Paul Simon's At the Zoo have offered cogent comparisons of animal behaviors and those shown by human beings, and in fact the whole "Eco Horror" subgenre is often built around a trope of "who are the real animals?", as Mankind's own bad behavior wreaks havoc on their own species. Now, there is certainly bad behavior galore running rampant through Only the Animals, but the film wisely doesn't dwell too much on this probably too obvious linkage. That said, there may be just the slightest subtext here of a kind of sacrificial lamb, albeit not necessarily with regard to any victim of mayhem but perhaps more saliently with regard to someone who is set up to take the fall for that mayhem.

And it's in the winding and wending regard that Only the Animals probably most resembles Fargo, though the story here is so convoluted (if, ultimately, quite simple and maybe just a tad smarmy) that some of the "coincidences" linking character to character can come off as far fetched. Still, this is a really intriguing story with some extremely memorable characters, and co-writer and director Dominik Moll keeps things moving briskly, with another surprise waiting just around a corner snowbank.

Only the Animals Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Only the Animals is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cohen Media Group with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. I haven't been able to track down any authoritative technical data on the shoot, but am assuming this digital capture had a 2K DI. This is a very appealing looking presentation a lot of the time, bolstered by some bright (if wintry) outdoor landscapes that offer good contrast supporting a range of white tones in the snowscapes. Fine detail on faces and fabrics is typically excellent. There's a somewhat more burnished look to some of the African footage, and in fact it looked to me like digital grain may have been added, but only to select scenes. There are a few scattered moments in both the French and African sequences where lighting is not especially strong and there's not a wealth of detail perceptible. I noticed no compression anomalies.

Only the Animals Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Only the Animals features a nice sounding DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 tracks in the original French (with forced English subtitles). There's not a ton of underscore in the film, though Benedikt Schiefer's contributions do engage the surround channels, but where the surround track really provides some substantial immersion is with regard to ambient environmental sounds. Both outdoor scenes as well as some of the barn sequences offer really good placement of effects in individual channels, creating a nice background clamor. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout.

Only the Animals Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (HD; 1:54)

Only the Animals Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Only the Animals may offer a new if not exactly improved subtextual meaning for "husbandry", but joking aside, this is a neatly twisty tale that manages to create a general sense of unease and things being slightly askew without ever really getting overly graphic or even traditionally "suspenseful". All of the principal performers are engaging (if more than occasionally disturbing), and Moll really invests the film with considerable style. Technical merits are solid, and Only the Animals comes Recommended.