Film

We the Animals

Name: We the Animals
Genre: Drama
Released: 2018
Cast: Evan Rosado, Raúl Castillo, Sheila Vand, Josiah Santiago, Isaiah Kristian

Coming-of-age

A bracingly intimate portrait of three brothers navigating childhood chaos under the roof of volatile, loving parents. Shot with lyrical immediacy and sudden bursts of animation, it captures the feral energy of boyhood—the roughhousing, the fear, the hunger for tenderness. It's for anyone who recognizes family as beautiful wreckage.

TMDb rating

3.2

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love coming-of-age films built from fragmented, sensory memory, where a lyrical, impressionistic style carries more weight than plot and a young boy's inner world feels as vivid as the rough household around him.

Skip it if you want a clear narrative spine and steady momentum; this drifts through vignettes and impressions, and its roughness and emotional volatility can feel bruising rather than cathartic over its short runtime.

What it asks of you: It runs about ninety minutes and moves in loose, sensory bursts rather than tidy scenes, so it asks you to sit with mood and texture and to piece the family's shape together yourself.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Moonlight2016

Three-chapter study of interiority and desire across a boy's life, moving with the same attentive grace through small moments and crushing revelations. Hypnotic cinematography that makes the ordinary feel sacred.

But Glacially paced; the narrative stays interior and quiet rather than dramatic. Some will want more plot.

The Florida Project2017

Unsparing portrait of childhood in the margins, where resourcefulness and joy coexist with constant precarity. Shot like a love letter to kids everyone else looks past.

But It refuses to sentimentalize or provide resolutions. The ending stings deliberately.

Minari2021

Family struggle and aspiration told through a child's eyes, with fractured tenderness between parents and kids. Captures the specific ache of belonging nowhere quite fully.

But The dramatic peaks are understated. If you want catharsis or clear stakes, you'll be frustrated.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from We the Animals

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Boyhood2014

Both films collapse cinema into the texture of childhood itself: not the highlights, but the long afternoons, the smallness of domestic violence, the way time moves differently when you're young and trapped. Animation enters We the Animals the same way memory and fantasy blur Boyhood's reality.

Filmed over twelve years, a boy grows from six to eighteen in real time with the same actors aging naturally. It's cinema as a kind of durational sculpture of becoming, of the accumulation of small moments that is a life.

But Three hours; very little happens in the conventional sense. It requires surrender to the pace of actual living rather than dramatic shape.

C'mon C'mon2021

Black-and-white meditation on what we owe children and how we fail them, moving between two kids and an adult uncle trying to be enough. Achingly human.

But Sparse and essayistic rather than narrative. Long takes, quiet dialogue. Some find it too slight.

A Ghost Story2017

Experimental and devastatingly sad meditation on family, time, and what remains. Uses genre to excavate real grief and the way the past haunts the present.

But Strange formal choices. A man in a sheet watching for extended stretches. Demands patience and interpretation.

First Reformed2018

Fever dream about faith and family collapse, visually audacious and psychologically unmoored. Paul Schrader working at peak intensity.

But Bleak and claustrophobic. The protagonist's mindset is dark; the film doesn't offer easy comfort.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always2020

Quiet, observant study of girlhood and family silence, following two teens across state lines. Trusts the viewer to read what's never spoken.

But Minimal plot; the drama is psychological and relational. Dialogue is sparse and often cryptic.

The Farewell2019

Family, culture, and mortality explored with both warmth and comedy, never choosing one tone when reality demands both. Bilingual and genuinely moving.

But If you expect a central dramatic conflict, you'll find the structure diffuse. It's more observation than arc.

Waves2019

Ambitious portrait of a family shattered and rebuilt, using color and music to convey emotional weather. Second half shifts register to show resilience and forgiveness.

But Occasionally overwrought; the formal showiness can overshadow the human story. Runs long.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring2003

Both films treat childhood and the father-child relationship through a register of ritual and symbolic action rather than dialogue and explicit emotion. Both use visual beauty and sudden violence to show how the personal and universal collapse into each other.

A Buddhist monk and boy live alone on an island temple, seasons turning around them. Wordless, visual storytelling about violence, desire, atonement, and cycles of repetition across generations. Hypnotic.

But Purely visual and metaphorical; no conventional narrative. Slow. Requires you to meet it in silence and patience rather than being met halfway.