In limited release now and expanding October 17 is ‘After The Hunt,’ directed by Luca Guadagnino and starring Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri, Michael Stuhlbarg, Chloë Sevigny, and Lío Mehiel.
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Initial Thoughts
Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Challengers’ was one of our favorite movies of 2024, which makes it strange to say that ‘After The Hunt’ might end up on our list of the worst films of 2025. This muddled drama, set in the elite halls of academia at Yale, focuses on a ‘he said/she said’ situation that is ripped right out of the headlines – of 2017, when #MeToo was dominating the cultural conversation.
But while the topic is certainly just as relevant and important now as it was a few years ago, ‘After The Hunt’ doesn’t add anything interesting to the conversation. Instead, Nora Garrett’s screenplay pushes a bunch of increasingly unlikable characters around on a chessboard of vagueness masquerading as ambiguity, while Guadagnino shoots it as if he’s not looking through the lens half the time. It’s a disappointingly sloppy effort in which even the blaring, burping score – by the usually spot-on Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – sounds off.
Story and Direction
‘After The Hunt’ kicks off with a credit sequence that immediately draws attention to itself by being done in the same font, with the same layout, that Woody Allen has used for his films for 50 years. Does Guadagnino see his film as a homage to some of Allen’s upper-class social dramas? Is he trolling Allen or Allen’s cancellation from the culture at large? It’s hard to tell.
Either way, the film opens during a party being given by Yale assistant philosophy professor Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts) and her psychiatrist husband Frederick (Michael Stuhlbarg) for faculty and student friends, with Alma clearly the center of attention for fellow professor Hank Gibson (Andrew Garfield) and pupil Maggie Resnick (Ayo Edebiri). After a spirited if somewhat caustic night of drinking and long-winded debate, Hank escorts Maggie home – and Maggie turns up outside Alma’s door the next day, saying that he assaulted her.
Maggie seems shocked when Alma doesn’t quite provide the full-throated support she expected, given Alma’s ‘history’ – a point we’ll go back to over and over again until it eventually comes out – and Hank later gives Alma (who is also his former lover, to the surprise of no one watching) his side of the story: that he called out Maggie – who’s gay, Black, and lives with a trans lawyer, just to make sure all the boxes are checked — for plagiarism on a paper and this is her way of getting revenge.
This places the remote, chilly, deeply private Alma squarely in the middle of a classic ‘believe women’ scenario – except it doesn’t quite seem like she does. But she’s also not squarely in Hank’s corner either. And none of them seem on the level about what really happened or how they feel about it. Alma and Hank are both competing for a tenured slot, by the way, and Alma is occasionally gripped by intense stomach pains. The relentless conniving, contriving, and jockeying on all sides only seem to prove that everyone’s a jerk, with no moral compass, and that we all basically suck at being decent human beings.
At least that’s the impression one walks out of ‘After The Hunt’ with, which drives home its point by being one of the more irritating films to watch in recent memory. Guadagnino’s camera droops inexplicably from the actors’ faces to their hands while they’re talking, as if looking for some secret code. Some shots are done in extreme close-up, with the actor talking directly into the camera – a jarring and purposeless trick in this scenario. The whole film feels airless, grimy, and ugly – even Guadagnino’s other 2024 movie, ‘Queer,’ was better visually than this.
Is it all supposed to mean something, or is Guadagnino just drawing attention to the fact that this is – like the stories that Alma, Maggie, and Hank all may or may not construct about themselves – a fictional narrative? We even hear the director say “Cut!” at the very end of the film, suggesting that he’s not trying to get at any real psychological, social, or emotional truth. And the movie doesn’t feel like that either.
Cast and Performances
Despite the disjointed script and characters they’re given to work with, Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield do fine work here. Roberts gives a performance that is both mysterious and somehow intimate, and effectively conveys Alma’s increasing terror as her carefully woven world begins to unravel around her. Garfield is similarly nuanced, making Hank both somehow sympathetic and yet totally the kind of arrogant, brash, rock-star academic who thinks he floats above the rules.
The movie’s secret weapon may be Michael Stuhlbarg, who exhibits patience, wariness, exasperation, and his own quirky, embittered set of values as Frederik – although he can be an intrusive boor with the best of them as well. The weakest link here is the gifted comedian Edebiri, who exhibits flashes of Maggie’s inner rage and cynicism, but who can no more carry this weighty material than she could the flat ‘Opus’ from earlier this year (the one in which John Malkovich attempted to play a rock god).
Final Thoughts
From time to time in ‘After The Hunt,’ Guadagnino puts a loudly ticking clock on the soundtrack as just another signifier that something dreadfully urgent and important is happening. But like everything else in the film, it’s instead merely annoying. And what exactly is happening anyway? Is the film indicting cancel culture, the #MeToo movement itself, or the insular bubble of academic life?
It’s all too incoherent to get a straight answer, and no one seems to know (except maybe Stuhlbarg) whether to play this as serious drama or histrionic soap opera. Either way, ‘After The Hunt’ is an empty mess that tries to say too much about a lot of different topics, and ends up saying nothing at all.
‘After The Hunt’ receives a score of 40 out of 100.
What is the plot of ‘After The Hunt’?
A college professor is forced to grapple with her own secretive past after one of her colleagues is faced with a serious accusation.
Who is in the cast of ‘After The Hunt’?
Julia Roberts as Alma Imhoff
Ayo Edebiri as Margaret “Maggie” Resnick
Andrew Garfield as Henrik “Hank” Gibson
Michael Stuhlbarg as Frederik Imhoff
Chloë Sevigny as Dr. Kim Sayers
Lío Mehiel as Alex
List of Luca Guadagnino Movies:
- ‘The Protagonists‘ (1999)
- ‘Melissa P. ‘(2005)
- ‘I Am Love‘ (2010)
- ‘A Bigger Splash‘ (2016)
- ‘Call Me by Your Name‘ (2018)
- ‘Suspiria‘ (2018)
- ‘Bones and All‘ (2022)
- ‘Challengers‘ (2024)
- ‘Queer‘ (2024)
- ‘After the Hunt’ (2025)
Preview:
