this is one of those documentaries with an incredibly important point. animals are suffering for your convenience and enjoyment. it's an important message that, for some reason, people are still not fully aware of. there are some issues with how that message is presented, however. on the writing side of things, the narration's script feels somewhat preachy at times; the word "speciesist" in particular is a less than optimal choice to be taken serious by people who either don't agree with or who choose to ignore the message. on the technical side, the filmmaking is very basic - almost exclusively just cut together clips of animal footage, and the voiceover is well spoken but the audio quality is not great. there's one big obvious problem though. i think most people who should watch this will simply choose not to. ignoring the problem is way easier than making changes to your life. if you aren't vegan or vegetarian i would very much like it if you watched this but i don't think many of those people would even find this documentary. if you're already a vegetarian or vegan, you'll be extremely horrified and left with some more new information on how shitty humans can be. i don't know if it's pointless to mention this but if you decide that you do want to watch earthlings, be aware that there's some pretty upsetting things in the documentary; the usual stuff you'd expect (livestock being killed and abused, which for some reason we're all aware of anyway) but also pet-related things. some of the images in this are probably going to stick with you for a while if you have compassion for animals. the only question now is "do i wait for humanity to end or do i join the animal liberation front?"