Director - Luca Guadagnino 
Writer - Nora Garrett 
Cast - Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg, Chloë Sevigny, 
Duration – 139 Minutes
 
Some films make you feel good. Others, like After the Hunt, make you feel something else entirely—conflicted, uncomfortable, hollowed out, angry, introspective. And that’s the point.
 
Luca Guadagnino’s tenth feature is not a crowd-pleaser. It’s not trying to be. There’s no soaring redemption arc, no neat resolution, no villain dragged off in handcuffs. What After the Hunt gives us instead is something much rarer in cinema: a story about the moral rot inside respected institutions, and the quieter horrors of complicity.
 
A Story That Cuts Deep
 
Set against the prestige-laden backdrop of Yale University, the film follows Professor Alma Olsson (a hauntingly restrained Julia Roberts), whose well-ordered academic world begins to unravel after her PhD student Maggie Price (a quietly devastating Ayo Edebiri) confides in her about a sexual assault involving Alma’s colleague and friend, Hank Gibson (Andrew Garfield, never more disarmingly charming—or unsettling).
 
What follows is not a courtroom drama or a whodunit. There’s no dramatic twist or big “gotcha” moment. Instead, the film slowly, methodically explores what people do when they're asked to take sides—not based on evidence, but on principle. And more painfully, what they’re willing to deny to protect their status, their future, their comfort.
 
Guadagnino, Stripped Down
 
For those familiar with Guadagnino’s sensual, emotionally lush work (Call Me By Your Name, Challengers), this is something altogether colder, sharper, and meaner. But no less meticulous. His camera lingers not on bodies or food or flirtations, but on silences—pregnant, awkward, weaponized silences—and on the brittle, book-lined halls where reputation often trumps reality.
 
The script, penned by newcomer Nora Garrett, is a scalpel. It doesn’t dramatize trauma; it interrogates response. It focuses less on what happened between Hank and Maggie, and more on what Alma does after. Every conversation is loaded, every glance and pause layered with subtext: guilt, fear, power, envy. This is a film not about assault itself, but the vast, tangled web of self-interest and moral posturing that often follows.
 
Julia Roberts Like You’ve Never Seen Her
 
It’s easy to forget how good Julia Roberts can be when she’s allowed to not be likable. As Alma, she’s brittle, brilliant, and ultimately tragic—not because of what happens to her, but because of what she chooses not to do. She plays Alma not as a villain, but as someone so deep in the system that she can’t see the rot she’s helping to preserve. Her performance is internal, intellectual, and painfully human.
 
Andrew Garfield, meanwhile, nails the kind of guy you’d invite to speak on a diversity panel and then find yourself doubting in the worst way. He’s magnetic—almost too magnetic—and the way the film gradually peels back his image is one of its most unnerving strengths.
 
Ayo Edebiri delivers something utterly quiet and powerful. She doesn't give a showy performance—there’s no big speech—but every scene with her carries weight. You feel her disillusionment, her exhaustion, her refusal to play nice for the sake of optics. It's a performance rooted in realism, and it lingers long after the credits roll.
 
Not Just a Message Film
 
What sets After the Hunt apart from many “issue films” is that it doesn’t come prepackaged with answers. It doesn’t moralize. It presents a deeply uncomfortable truth: that most harm isn’t caused by monsters, but by well-meaning people in cardigans, quoting Foucault, who are too afraid to lose what they’ve built.
 
It’s also deeply interested in generational failure—how older, respected figures in power positions (like Alma) fail younger ones (like Maggie) not because they are evil, but because they prioritize survival. It's a critique of the institutionalized apathy that cloaks itself in intellectual rigor.
 
The Score and the Silence
 
The haunting score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross thrums beneath the surface like a suppressed scream—never overwhelming, but always present. It adds to the film’s tension, which is less about what will happen next, and more about how long can this be ignored.
 
And then there’s the silence. Guadagnino uses silence the way others use violence. In some scenes, what’s not said hurts more than any confrontation could.
 
After the Hunt isn’t an easy film. It’s not fun. It won’t trend on TikTok or make for great date-night conversation. But it’s important. It forces its audience to confront the ways truth gets bent, buried, or politely disregarded in the name of professionalism, friendship, or fear. In an age where everyone wants a story with heroes and villains, Guadagnino delivers something far more unsettling: a story without heroes, only humans. Uncomfortable, complex, brilliant.