I saw this film as part of the TIFF Secret Movie Club program. The screenings have that film festival feeling, because we’re seeing movies before wide release. Also, they’re often capped by a Q&A session with part of the filmmaking team. For the screening of The Animal Kingdom (a.k.a. Le Règne Animal), we were told before the show that there’d be a recorded interview with the sound supervisor at the end. Because of this fact, I tried to tune into the auditory experience, and indeed, it’s one of the notable technical achievements of the film.

In the story, people have started to randomly mutate into Dr. Moreau-esque animal hybrids. We follow a family whose matriarch has begun this transformation, and has disappeared into the wild, while the father and son try to get her back—both in the sense of physically locating her, and in the sense of “curing” her and making her human again. The tension mounts further when the townspeople get their pitchforks ready, and further still when the boy shows signs of mutation too.

The designs of the hybrids are cool, and brought to the screen mostly by performance and prosthetics. The aforementioned sound design comes into play in the way the creatures blend their human speaking voices with animal sounds.

Sci-fi-grounded-in-reality is probably one of my favourite things, and I enjoyed the film on its technical achievements and plotting. However, the allegorical elements felt too broad to be effective. It only points at subjects like racism, queerness, environmentalism, without really diving into any. Honestly, it covers a lot of the same thematic ground as X-Men, but without the luxury of time that a long-running series affords.

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Even though I probably wouldn’t recommend watching it to anyone I know, I absolutely respect the quality and originality of the writing in this show. The actors are also amazing all around, especially Justin Theroux and Carrie Coon, and they deliver many emotional gut punches.

I’ve been listening to the musical score (by Max Richter) since finishing the three seasons, and I have to say I’ve been moved more by the music alone than by the show itself. I think the purity of the score evokes the sadness that permeates the show, but distills it from the frustrations that I felt with the story.

The premise of the show is as follows: one day, in a single instant, two percent of the world’s population disappears with no trace and no explanation. The story picks up three years later, and deals with the people who are left behind. As expected, everyone is in pain. Where the show loses me is the extent to which every character is broken. I was reading the book Humankind at the same time as I was watching The Leftovers, and I found it hard to swallow that the collective trauma in the show has made everyone hateful and hostile towards each other. I want to believe that people would find a way to cooperate and support each other through the darkness.

I would describe this film as an “artsy rom-com,” and I mean that as a compliment. I really connected to the introverted main character Fran, who struggles to insert herself into the superficialities of office social life. Fran is me: I’m certain that I, like her, have grabbed a slice of cake from the office party and left to enjoy it at my desk alone. And when a new coworker joins the team, and you have to go around the table and say a little something about yourself, I have also waited my turn in dread, and just blurted out my introduction to get it over with.

But what really makes me feel like Fran is me and I am Fran is what happens between her and this new coworker. It made me reflect that the most valuable relationships in my life have been with people who bring me out of my shell. Sometimes I find the phrase come out of one’s shell to be misleading, as if once you’re out, you’re out and there’s no going back. More accurate is the continuous tense: I will always be coming out of my shell, and I must appreciate the people who make it just a little bit easier.

(Aside: when I was drafting this post, I omitted the last word of the title, so that anyone looking over my shoulder at my screen wouldn’t get the wrong idea, i.e. Look at that guy… is he writing a suicide note? It’s a provocative title to be sure, and I was weary going in that it would be dark, but to my relief, the tone of the movie is more quirky than dreary. I wouldn’t necessarily say that Fran is suicidal, more that she wonders whether she would be missed if she were dead.)

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