QUICK HITS: AFTER THE HUNT (10/17/25)

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Maggie (Ayo Egebiri) confronts her professor Alma

(Julia Roberts) in a scene from director Luca Guadagnino's 
AFTER THE HUNT. Credit: Yannis Drakoulidis. © 2025
Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved.

AFTER THE HUNT

Ever watch a movie that you know featured (for the most part) good acting performances, yet ultimately felt like a waste of two hours due to a story distracted by unlikable characters, questionable statements on current affairs with an unsatisfying ending to boot? If not, that experience awaits in AFTER THE HUNT, the new drama set on the campus of Yale from director Luca Guadagnino and the debut screenplay from actress Nora Garrett.

Sometimes, there are art house-style films one can watch that leave you with questions. In the case of After the Hunt, none of the answers to those questions will be satisfying as the films tries to do too much to make itself something more than it is. 

 

Unfamiliar with AFTER THE HUNT? The plot is as follows: A Yale college professor seeking tenure and dealing with constant pain played by Julia Roberts finds herself conflicted when presented with a dilemma: Believe her overly flirtatious colleague Hank played by Andrew Garfield or Ayo Edebiri’s Maggie, a gay, black Ph.D. student when she accuses the former of sexual assault. Garfield, however, believes Maggie is using the assault story to cover up the fact she’s cheating her way to her degree, riding the good fortune of her rich parents all the way to her diploma. 

 

That dramatic setting, however, never reaches its potential due to a multitude of problems. Whereas Garfield’s character explains just how stupid and ludicrous his characters’ actions are, Roberts’ character ridiculously commits an offense her character literally could have avoided by waiting a few minutes. Then again, Edebiri’s Maggie does her best to hurt the progress of women and black women in particular with her character’s inexplicable actions. In trying to present questions about race, gender and social dynamics, the film veers off into weird tangents which don’t go anywhere, don’t pay off and ultimately, aren’t entertaining. Despite Michael Stuhlbarg’s fine performance, delivering both levity and mirror to many of the other characters’ flaws and foibles, After the Hunt – which never clearly defines what its hunt really is without requiring Blu-ray commentary from its creators – is, to borrow from another, better film, “much ado about nothing.”

The film's creators wanted to create a story that explores the depths of morals, how we justify our actions and related complications. What they actually delivered is a self-aggrandizing, overly stylistic mediocre stage play aspiring to be film that unfortunately takes more energy to explain (or appreciate) than it's worth. 

 

Much like the academic minds in the film who can chatter on about philosophy ad nauseum with no real substance or impact, AFTER THE HUNT is a good argument against making a film just because you can. Because this dog can’t hunt, never hunts and shouldn’t be hunted by anyone seeking a memorable cinematic experience.

RATING (OUT OF FOUR BUCKETS OF POPCORN):