After the Hunt (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

PopEntertainment
2 days ago
4 min read

AFTER THE HUNT (2025)

Starring Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg, Chloë Sevigny, Lío Mehiel, Ariyan Kassam, Will Price, Thaddea Graham, Christine Dye, Burgess Byrd, Bella Glanville, Frankie Ferrari, David Leiber and the voice of Cameron Krogh Stone.

Screenplay by Nora Garrett.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino.

Distributed by Amazon MGM Studios. 139 minutes. Rated R.

There is something strangely old-fashioned about After the Hunt, like it should have come out like ten years ago. Not that it doesn’t touch on a lot of hot-button subjects – everything from #MeToo, university politics, generational divides, cancel culture, gender identity, racism, diversity, sexism to plagiarism. All of these are important subjects, and yet all have been sort of played out in the media over recent years.

Frankly, this extremely intellectual story, cloistered away in the hallowed halls of Yale and populated by extremely woke (and I consider that to be mostly a positive), but rather bitter and confused people, sort of sticks out in the current culture. I hate to say this, but can something like this succeed in the America of Donald Trump? A world where diversity and inclusion are frowned upon, empathy is looked at as weakness and sexual harassment is ignored or covered up for if you are powerful enough and have enough money.

I’m not even saying that the fact that After the Hunt doesn’t fit comfortably into this era is a dreadful thing. Ten years ago the world was a much better place than it is now. And lord help us if entertainment starts to follow the tastes of MAGA extremists. I’m also not saying that After the Hunt is in any way a bad movie or does not have some interesting points to make about life, philosophy, sex, intellectualism and ambition. I’m just saying that it is coming out in an extremely awkward time to be making its particular arguments.

You can tell we’re in for… something… from the opening credits, which steal the black background and narrow white typeface font and formatting style of classic Woody Allen films. To a certain extent this is like Allen’s more dramatic serious films – things like Manhattan, Interiors, or Crimes and Misdemeanors – about slightly pretentious intellectuals avoiding the potential minefields of relationships, sex, race, addiction, class and tenure. And of course, for better or worse, Allen has personally been canceled, which also fits the theme of this film.

Of course, unlike much of Allen’s work, there is very little that is funny in After the Hunt. Even compared to director Luca Guadagnino’s way-overrated film from last year, Challengers, After the Hunt is a pretty morose and humorless film. At least Challengers had some lightness peeking through occasionally. But that’s okay, there is a place in the world for seriousness.

Julia Roberts has buried the last of her Pretty Woman America’s sweetheart Mona Lisa smile in this role as philosophy Professor Alma Imhoff at Yale. Her character is numb and overly cautious, cold and bitter, devious and kind of dismissive, and obsessed with furthering her career, although she will not acknowledge that fact.

She is sort of over her doting psychiatrist husband Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg) and is hiding a mysterious malady which is making her periodically double over in pain and vomit into the nearest toilet. She still has her old apartment, a sterile-looking little compound in a funky seaside neighborhood that she uses as an escape. She has an oddly flirtatious relationship with one of her colleagues, Hank (Andrew Garfield) and is sort of frenemies with Dr. Kim Sayers (Chloë Sevigny), her psychiatrist and the university's student liaison.

Definitely not the normal Julia Roberts type of role, but in fairness, she does nail it. It is a terrific performance as a hard-to-like character.

Alma’s tenuous house of cards starts coming down thanks to Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), a young lesbian student who sort of idolizes Alma. One night, after a get-together at Alma’s apartment, Maggie claims that Hank physically violated her, although she will not say specifically what he did – claiming she does not want to have to relive it. Hank, of course, denies the charge and claims it was retribution for his accusing Maggie of plagiarism on her thesis.

This puts Alma smack dab in the middle of a campus scandal – she believes Maggie, but she still wants to trust Hank. It also brings up certain age-related schisms with her students. She believes that life is painful and has always buried her feelings, and she doesn’t get why students feel the need to examine and punish every little wrong that is committed in life.

Honestly, I’m not 100% sure what point Guadagnino and screenwriter Nora Garrett are trying to make. Are they suggesting that Generation Z has been coddled and can be over-sensitive? Okay, that’s not exactly breaking news. Still, the older adults are all pretty horrific in their own ways, too, they just do it a lot more passive-aggressively. So, wouldn’t it make sense to be moving away from those bad examples? Particularly since, in many different ways, everyone on both sides of the debate seem to succeed despite their questionable behavior.

Still, in its dry and clipped way, After the Hunt is complicated, gorgeously filmed and well-acted. And perhaps, standing out in this strange era of American history is not a terrible thing.

Jay S. Jacobs