After the Hunt, screening at BFI London Film Festival, is a film that tries to convey too much, ultimately saying very little. It will likely find a way to irritate both sides of the political spectrum, rather than offering any sage or provocative insights into the culture wars or systemic sociopolitical flaws.
Navigating politically charged landscapes can be daunting for filmmakers and ordinary people alike, yet they provide fertile ground for storytelling. The conflicts and nuances of subjects are what generate the greatest engagement in stories. It’s therefore understandable why Luca Guadagnino would take such a complex subject matter for his newest film, After the Hunt. It’s just a pity that the movie itself isn’t very good.
Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts) is a professor of philosophy at Yale University in 2019, a choice that feels sagely deliberate given its proximity to the start of the #MeToo Movement. She is often characterised as cold, blunt and secretive, but she’s nonetheless liked and respected among her peers, and loved by her husband (Michael Stuhlbarg). She even suspects that her protege, PhD student Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), has a crush on her. Nonetheless, she works hard and shares her wisdom with her students, hoping to make tenure by the end of the school term.
Matters become complicated when Maggie approaches Alma outside her flat and, while clearly very nervous, makes a horrifying allegation. She says that Hank Gibson (Andrew Garfield), a fellow philosophy professor at Yale and Alma’s main rival for tenure, sexually assaulted her after walking her back to her residence. Alma is unsure what to believe, but nonetheless does her best to handle the matter as fairly and professionally as possible. Her attempts to address the seriousness of this accusation force her to confront her beliefs and complicated past.
Photo Credit: Yannis Drakoulidis. © 2025 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Guadagnino paints a pretty volatile setting. In the aftermath of the #MeToo Movement, the widespread issue of men mistreating women through a variety of means, each as unpleasant as the last, has been spotlighted a lot more, and rightfully so. Alma’s and our gut instinct is to believe Maggie, but there are complexities to the situation that make the objective truth harder to determine. For example, Maggie often notes how her position as a black woman in a white and male-dominated space puts her at a disadvantage, and she’s not wrong.
Yet she’s also the daughter of billionaire donors to Yale, affording her a level of privilege that has allowed her to coast by, while also giving her considerable leverage over the university. We’re left wondering if this is a genuine case of mistreatment or a vain attempt to cancel; the explorations highlight the key themes: the difficulty of finding the truth and the flaws of memory when it comes to resolving a conflict.
The cast rises to the challenge of this heavy premise. Julia Roberts commands the screen with a subdued performance, maintaining the demeanour of a stoic, knowledgeable woman while occasionally allowing the mask to slip. An outburst at a student whom she feels lacks a deep understanding of righteousness serves as a brutal takedown, reminiscent of Cate Blanchett’s monologue in Tar, while also underscoring the pressure Alma is under. Garfield’s usual charms here are as ominous as they are charismatic, creating an enigma out of Hank as we question whether or not he may have done what he’s been accused of. Edebiri, a rising talent of her generation, demonstrates vulnerability and a potential duplicity to her role, exuding power and fragility sometimes within moments of each other.
However, despite the intense intricacies, the film itself feels strangely toothless. This is due primarily to both the character arcs and the politics feeling flaky and meandering. The film explores both sides of the conflict, but the presentation feels more like lectures than conversations, with the academic characters constantly pontificating and never stopping to engage in conversation like regular people, save for a brief bedside scene near the end. It portrays the politics of its conflict in terms of buzzwords and talking points, rather than presenting a well-developed argument. At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon boomer, it’s a film that often laments the modern culture in which everyone is afraid of offending someone, while simultaneously not wanting to offend anyone either. Unlike an academic paper, the film spends so much time highlighting various points of contention that it never actually generates a fulfilling analysis.
Not helping its case is the somewhat invasive filmmaking, despite its intended even-handed approach. We open with the sound of a clock ticking, a sound design that recurs throughout the picture at various points. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score, with its ominous piano keys, often hangs over the dialogue, at times overlapping and even suppressing it. Perhaps the thinking was that this would highlight rising pressure. In reality, it muffles the already bloated dialogue, making the film difficult to listen to. Twinning this with rather simplistic shot-reverse shot setups, despite the occasionally engaging visuals, gives the film an air of mundanity.
What this results in is a picture that feels meandering and uncertain of itself, a very uncharacteristic outcome for a Guadagnino movie. The point of the film, I think, is that there are disingenuous people out there who will take advantage of current cultural climates – people who will tell you to check your privilege or do better while simultaneously padlocking their own closet of skeletons – but that doesn’t mean we should dismiss them when demonstrably awful things happen to them.
However, its otherwise captivating themes and performances are overshadowed by misguided technical choices and a script that juggles so many elements at once that it never takes the time to hone its skills. It’s a film that tries to convey too much, ultimately saying very little. It will likely find a way to irritate both sides of the political spectrum, rather than offering any sage or provocative insights into the culture wars or systemic sociopolitical flaws.
It may sound like a vague cliché, but the best Guadagnino films have a certain spark to them that makes them highly engrossing, if not at least intriguing. Challengers certainly had it. The Suspiria remake had it. Call Me By Your Name had it, even with its more problematic elements. After the Hunt just doesn’t spark. There’s no shortage of fantastic performances or food for thought, but it’s far too toothless and far too noisily made to make the most of them. One can admire Guadagnino’s willingness to explore such politically charged territory, but a story with this much gravity to its themes deserves something much more refined.
After the Hunt opens in UK cinemas on October 17.
Follow Us