My Animal Review

October 11, 2023 at 7:23pm
By Jason Stettner

There was a long list of buzz like words that drew me to the concept of My Animal. It sounded strange, maybe a tad throwback in concept and it’s something I felt could be a standout at the Calgary International Film Festival. The narrative follows a young woman named Heather (Bobbi Salvör Menuez) as she deals with a number of issues.

Her family is rather damaged, she struggles with sexuality within a small town and is also a werewolf. It’s a certain series of setups that come together to provide a tad bit of a draw in terms of the concept. Things start out great with a delivery of body horror to set the stage and we begin to learn more about this character and her struggles.

It’s after these brief introductions that we see a fresh to the area figure skater Jonny (Amandla Stenberg) come into the picture. Heather is immediately smitten and the two have a flirtatious atmosphere surrounding them as they get to know each other. The film continues to build with its story but the concept never really gets taken anywhere.

It’s rather disappointing as while I liked the setup it didn’t seem like there was any sort of definitive conclusion or direction. It was just teases ultimately culminating into a lackluster situation which wasn’t very exciting to say the least.

That lack of a conclusive element or really some sort of profound bite left me with a sour taste. It was a movie where while initially well paced, it began to drag and I had hoped that something would really cap this off nicely. Instead it just lingered. I was impressed by the visual efforts here.

The presentation was dark, moody and hit that whole mysterious atmosphere rather well. It was a cold, darkened backdrop behind this snowed in little town. There were really neat smaller shots to help from the characters and while we got a good look at our lead I couldn’t help but feel surrounding characters could have used more development or some deeper edge.

The more erotic in nature scenes were; umm, fascinating I suppose I would say. There was stuff with an egg, it did fit the movie strangely enough and I thought it was worth mentioning here in case you’re wonder what sort of material is present. Definitely some mature interaction scenes, which were deeply moody in presentation.

The Conclusion

My Animal starts out strong with some unsettling scenes and even has a nice build-up, it just ultimately doesn’t end up going anywhere concluding with a rather weak bite. I really just desired something more to eventually happen as the film does start to drag just after the halfway point.

I was sort of wondering where things were going, or if there was anything more to this. It kept seemingly building up towards something exciting or bizarre and was instead just predictably lackluster in conclusion. It’s a shame as I did like how this was visually presented, how it was acted and the concepts at play.

I would guess there just wasn’t really anything profound that was trying to be said by the end of the whole thing. I completely get the themes here, which we’ve seen explored often in recent years. It’s just for something with such a neat setup there’s little to no pay off and it becomes tiring to watch as the movie progresses.

My Animal Review at Theather with Standard Viewing during Calgary Film Festival
Screening Provided by Calgary Film

Rating Overall: 5.7