The Animal Kingdom (2023) Movie Ending & Themes Explained: Does Emile Get Apprehended? (2025)

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Thomas Cailley’s film, “The Animal Kingdom” (2023), is a perceptive, emotional innovation in the science fiction genre. Topping the Cesar Award nominations and almost bound to scoop up a few, the film wisely strips away exposition in setting up its world where a mutating disease has turned many into human-animal hybrids.

The Animal Kingdom (2023) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:

The film opens with the semblance of just another ordinary day. Emile (Paul Kircher) is going with his dad, Francois (Romain Duris), to visit his mother, who is in a medical center. On the road, they are interrupted by the exploits of a strange hybrid, a winged man, who wreaks havoc. However, this doesn’t seem to register as an anomalous sight with the father or the son. At the center, there’s another peculiar hybrid.

Soon, we learn that the mutations are happening because of a disease that has been eluding medical and scientific grasp. As a result, those detected with it and transforming are being whisked away and put in segregated centers. Emile’s mother, Lana, has been stowed away for the same. The doctor informs them that she and the other hybrids are being relocated to another center somewhere else, which would require them to move.

Emile and his dad arrive at the new setting, a temporary residence for two months. It’s in a small town tucked amidst a looming, dense enormity of forest cover. On the first night itself, there is a severe thunderstorm. The morning after, they wake up to chaos and discover a police operation underway. A tree had fallen on a road, and the bus carrying the hybrids had tumbled off the road. This led to most of them going missing and the police set out looking for them. Francois is assured by a police assistant, Julia (Adele Exarchopoulos), that the cops will do their best to trace his wife. But he takes it upon himself to conduct the search.

The father and son drive miles and miles at night, beckoning to Lana. Francois puts on the special song he and Lana bonded over, hoping she edges towards them. The quest doesn’t positively pan out. Nevertheless, the father keeps looking, putting clothes dangling outside his house, fervently optimistic she will be drawn towards them by her hyper-sensitive smell.

At school, Emile is romantically inclined towards Nina (Billie Blain). However, Emile discovers, to his horror, that he is developing the features of a hybrid, his backbone sharpening and his power of smell revving up to acute levels. He has to constantly clip his swiftly growing nails, and his teeth are falling out. He tries to keep the nature of the shift in his physicality a secret from everyone, including his dad.

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The town seems to get sharply divided into opposing camps based on whether they are favorable or antagonistic to the hybrids. There are those who proudly and aggressively put on the mantle of hunters and a few charitable souls who are willing to listen to them with empathy and genuine attention. Emile is extremely wary of being apprehended as one of the emergent hybrids in flux. On a morning after he and his father have been searching for Lana, Emile stumbles across a winged man whom he had encountered earlier. There is also a chameleonic kid who lurks. Except from a bloody scratch, Emile manages to get away.

Gradually, as Emile’s hybrid features grow, he keeps returning to the winged man, who calls himself Fix. Emile helps him in his journey of taking flight. Soon, however, Francois discovers his son’s mutating state. He confronts him and instructs him to stick to the routine so as not to arouse any suspicion. While Emile initially tries to abide by the routine, he mostly skitters away to the forest.

The Animal Kingdom (2023) Movie Ending Explained:

Does Emile Get Apprehended?

The Animal Kingdom (2023) Movie Ending & Themes Explained: Does Emile Get Apprehended? (1)

At the midsummer party, he hooks up with Nina, who seems to find pleasure in his hybridity, but a snooping classmate tries to intimidate Emile thereafter. Emile attacks him and escapes the scene. The whole police machinery tries to chase him. Fix swoops in over the fields, attempting to distract the ongoing pursuit. Ultimately, he is shot down. Emile wakes up in a cave, where he meets his mutated mother.

He makes his way through the depths of the wilderness, where he encounters all sorts of hybrids. His wandering is rudely interrupted by a military intervention. He is detained. The interrogating officer realizes he is a hybrid, but Francois quickly takes Emile into the car. Emile thinks his father is taking him to a center. However, ultimately, Francois lets him off at the edge of the forest, insisting he go off and carve out his own existence on his own terms without any imposition. Francois is aware his son can thrive as who he is, only if he is let alone.

The Animal Kingdom (2023) Movie Theme Explained:

Co-existence and Community

The film has a clear, direct appeal. It doesn’t beat around the bush in getting to it and opts to spell it out for the viewer in unambiguous terms. Some may call the appeal unsubtle in its intonation, but it is filled with urgency and a proactive plea for amity and togetherness, shoving aside prejudice and difference. The focus is on humanising ‘others’, rendering them in an empathetic, warm light and offsetting hostility and disgust as the immediate responses to something that isn’t personally identifiable or gifted with a set of features removed from ours.

Most people refer to the hybrids as ‘creatures’ or ‘creeps,’ with an unequivocally derogatory slant, even rallying to wholly wipe them out. While it is those whose close ones have been affected by the disease are the ones calling for it, the bid for a compassionate, cooperative community between the ‘shepherd’ and the ‘wolf’ shines through. The film posits the need for an equitable balance between them as necessary for collective well-being and the way forward.

The screenplay is gratingly one note in etching the police authorities and some kids as recklessly gloating in their hatred for the hybrids, with the latter’s obliteration as their central pursuit and interest. The film could have benefited from more nuance and ambivalence in this regard, but one can argue that might have taken away some of the thematic insistence on examining the ‘us-vs-them’ binary.

Read More: The Animal Kingdom (2023) Movie Review: France’s answer to the X-Men

Trailer:

The Animal Kingdom (2023) Movie Links: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Wikipedia, Letterboxd
Cast of The Animal Kingdom (2023) Movie: Romain Duris, Paul Kircher, Adèle Exarchopoulos,Tom Mercier, Billie Blain
The Animal Kingdom (2023) Movie Genre: Adventure/Drama, Runtime: 2h 10m
Where to watch The Animal Kingdom
The Animal Kingdom (2023) Movie Ending & Themes Explained: Does Emile Get Apprehended? (2025)
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