Review of All the Little Animals

I think "All the little animals" is meant to be a moral parable, but its moral stance is fairly paranoid. Good = the confused Bobby, a few dreadlocked travellers, and the usual John Hurt misanthropist who befriends him. Bad = just about everyone else (stepfather, crooked doctor, unsympathetic male nurse, trucker who runs down foxes, Yuppie lepidopterist, car drivers, etc). Is no-one normal in this world? That said, it's a satisfying revenge story; De Winter (aka "The Fat"), played by Daniel Benzali rather in the style of Richard Burton, is a wonderfully memorable villain who terrifies Bobby not by violence or anger but by ultra-controlled mindgames. The film is based on the first novel by the late Walker Hamilton, and I suspect that it's based in a personal mythology - family issues, perhaps - that we'll never know.