Luca Guadagnino following up two great releases in 2024 with Challengers and Queer was going to be challenging. He is riding his largest wave of success yet, a hot streak that began with Call Me By Your Name in 2017 and has proven to be one of the most prolific and consistently entertaining runs to watch.
For some, the dud came with his Suspiria remake, or the cannibal romance Bones and All, but if you have been on board with Guadagnino through these last five films, After the Hunt is his most challenging movie yet for all the wrong reasons.
The film follows Alma (Julia Roberts), a Yale philosophy professor whose life begins to implode when her star student, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri) accuses her close friend and colleague, Hank (Andrew Garfield) of sexually assaulting her. Alma is caught in the increasingly hostile conflict that arises out of Maggie’s accusation and Hank’s denial, with both parties leaning on her for support.
After the Hunt, which Guadagnino directs from a script by Nora Garrett, ties this narrative together with thematic questions about victimhood, power dynamics, and what motivates people when allegiances are tested by such a harrowing experience.
All of this sounds worthwhile on paper, but the movie amounts to a mere shrug by the end.
After the Hunt is bogged down by a script that could have morphed into a much more successful satire of the insular qualities of elite academic culture, because those brief flashes are the only moments when the movie feels substantive. Everything else is just noise, a series of empty provocations without any meaning, more deserving of a place in a groan-worthy op-ed than in a feature film.
It is hard to even be offended by the film, because After the Hunt makes no stance in any direction. Everything is left open to interpretation, not because it is clever but because it is hollow.
Despite After the Hunt being quite dull at times, with an inflated view of its own cleverness, the film remains watchable on account of the performances. Roberts is soaring with one of her most substantive roles in the last few years, a heavy hitter that reminds us all why she was the star of her generation. She tears into the dialogue in a way that could almost convince you that you are watching a great movie.
Garfield plays the accused with just the right amount of plausible deniability. He is a man who is charming and thoughtful while also feeling uncanny in a way that is hard to define. You just have a feeling he could turn on you at any moment, and when he does get spiteful, Garfield goes big but manages to stick the landing.
Edebiri is saddled with the brunt of the film’s inauthentic, cynical babbling on about power dynamics, playing a part that so vaguely defined that her delivery comes off as awkward and stilted at times. However, it is not Edebiri’s performance that is miscalculated as much as it is the writing she is given.
Aside from Roberts, the casting standout is Michael Stuhlbarg, who has worked with Guadagnino before on Call Me By Your Name and steps in to portray Roberts’ eccentric psychoanalyst husband, Frederik, a character intentionally sidelined in the narrative, essentially existing in his own movie where he cooks lavish meals and mime conducts along to classical music in a boisterous fashion. Frederik seems to have accepted that they will remain stuck in this loveless, tense marriage. So he has given up on trying and resigned to just enjoying himself in whatever small ways he can.
Stuhlbarg brings life to this movie anytime he is on screen in such a manner that you would rather just stick with him and Roberts for a full two hours.
After the Hunt has all the makings of a great movie. A strong director taking on a provocative subject matter with an all-star cast, a crew of incredibly talented people such as cinematographer Malik Hassan Sayeed and composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross behind the scenes. It looks great, sounds great, and the cast is giving it their all. But everything on the page is so murky that After the Hunt skates by without much risk of offending.
It is too messy to be worthy of anger; a film better left forgotten if not for the powerful performance at the center.
4 out of 10
After the Hunt is in theaters now.
This article appears in Oct. 1-31, 2025.