(L to R) Ayo Edebiri as Maggie and Julia Roberts as Alma in ‘After the Hunt’, from Amazon MGM Studios. Picture Credit score: Yannis Drakoulidis. © 2025 Amazon Content material Providers LLC. All Rights Reserved.
In restricted launch now and increasing 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.
“Not the whole lot is meant to make you snug.”
Launch Date: Oct 17, 2025
Run Time: 2 hr 19 min
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Preliminary Ideas
(L to R) Andrew Garfield as Hank and Julia Roberts as Alma in ‘After the Hunt’, from Amazon MGM Studios. Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios. © 2025 Amazon Content material Providers LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Challengers’ was considered one of our favourite motion pictures of 2024, which makes it unusual to say that ‘After The Hunt’ may find yourself on our listing of the worst movies of 2025. This muddled drama, set within the elite halls of academia at Yale, focuses on a ‘he stated/she stated’ scenario that’s ripped proper out of the headlines – of 2017, when #MeToo was dominating the cultural dialog.
However whereas the subject is definitely simply as related and vital now because it was just a few years in the past, ‘After The Hunt’ doesn’t add something attention-grabbing to the dialog. As a substitute, Nora Garrett’s screenplay pushes a bunch of more and more unlikable characters round on a chessboard of vagueness masquerading as ambiguity, whereas Guadagnino shoots it as if he’s not trying by the lens half the time. It is a disappointingly sloppy effort by which even the blaring, burping rating – by the often spot-on Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – sounds off.
Story and Course
(L to R) Ayo Edebiri, director Luca Guadagnino and Julia Roberts on the set of ‘After the Hunt’, from Amazon MGM Studios. Picture Credit score: Yannis Drakoulidis. © 2025 Amazon Content material Providers LLC. All Rights Reserved.
‘After The Hunt’ kicks off with a credit score sequence that instantly attracts consideration to itself by being achieved in the identical font, with the identical format, that Woody Allen has used for his movies for 50 years. Does Guadagnino see his movie as a homage to a few of Allen’s upper-class social dramas? Is he trolling Allen or Allen’s cancellation from the tradition at giant? It’s exhausting to inform.
Both method, the movie opens throughout a celebration being given by Yale assistant philosophy professor Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts) and her psychiatrist husband Frederick (Michael Stuhlbarg) for college and pupil pals, with Alma clearly the focal point for fellow professor Hank Gibson (Andrew Garfield) and pupil Maggie Resnick (Ayo Edebiri). After a spirited if considerably caustic evening of ingesting and long-winded debate, Hank escorts Maggie dwelling – and Maggie turns up outdoors Alma’s door the subsequent day, saying that he assaulted her.
Maggie appears shocked when Alma doesn’t fairly present the full-throated assist she anticipated, given Alma’s ‘historical past’ – some extent we’ll return to over and over till it will definitely comes out – and Hank later provides Alma (who can also be his former lover, to the shock of nobody watching) his facet of the story: that he known as out Maggie – who’s homosexual, Black, and lives with a trans lawyer, simply to ensure all of the containers are checked — for plagiarism on a paper and that is her method of getting revenge.
(L to R) Director Luca Guadagnino and actor Julia Roberts on the set of ‘After the Hunt’, from Amazon MGM Studios. Picture Credit score: Yannis Drakoulidis. © 2025 Amazon Content material Providers LLC. All Rights Reserved.
This locations the distant, chilly, deeply non-public Alma squarely in the midst of a traditional ‘consider girls’ situation – besides it doesn’t fairly seem to be she does. However she’s additionally not squarely in Hank’s nook both. And none of them appear on the extent about what actually occurred or how they really feel about it. Alma and Hank are each competing for a tenured slot, by the best way, and Alma is often gripped by intense abdomen pains. The relentless conniving, contriving, and jockeying on all sides solely appear to show that everybody’s a jerk, with no ethical compass, and that all of us mainly suck at being respectable human beings.
A minimum of that’s the impression one walks out of ‘After The Hunt’ with, which drives dwelling its level by being one of many extra irritating movies to observe in latest reminiscence. Guadagnino’s digital camera droops inexplicably from the actors’ faces to their arms whereas they’re speaking, as if searching for some secret code. Some photographs are achieved in excessive close-up, with the actor speaking instantly into the digital camera – a jarring and purposeless trick on this situation. The entire movie feels airless, dirty, and ugly – even Guadagnino’s different 2024 film, ‘Queer,’ was higher visually than this.
Is all of it alleged to imply one thing, or is Guadagnino simply drawing consideration to the truth that that is – just like the tales that Alma, Maggie, and Hank all might or might not assemble about themselves – a fictional narrative? We even hear the director say “Minimize!” on the very finish of the movie, suggesting that he’s not attempting to get at any actual psychological, social, or emotional reality. And the film doesn’t really feel like that both.
Forged and Performances
(L to R) Michael Stuhlbarg and Julia Roberts stars in ‘After the Hunt’, from Amazon MGM Studios. Picture Credit score: Yannis Drakoulidis. © 2025 Amazon Content material Providers LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Regardless of the disjointed script and characters they’re given to work with, Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield do high quality work right here. Roberts provides a efficiency that’s each mysterious and one way or the other intimate, and successfully conveys Alma’s rising terror as her fastidiously woven world begins to unravel round her. Garfield is equally nuanced, making Hank each one way or the other sympathetic and but completely the sort of conceited, brash, rock-star tutorial who thinks he floats above the principles.
The film’s secret weapon could also be Michael Stuhlbarg, who reveals endurance, wariness, exasperation, and his personal quirky, embittered set of values as Frederik – though he could be an intrusive boor with one of the best of them as nicely. The weakest hyperlink right here is the gifted comic Edebiri, who reveals flashes of Maggie’s inside rage and cynicism, however who can no extra carry this weighty materials than she might the flat ‘Opus’ from earlier this 12 months (the one by which John Malkovich tried to play a rock god).
Remaining Ideas
(L to R) Andrew Garfield as Hank and Julia Roberts as Alma in ‘After the Hunt’, from Amazon MGM Studios. Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios. © 2025 Amazon Content material Providers LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Infrequently in ‘After The Hunt,’ Guadagnino places a loudly ticking clock on the soundtrack as simply one other signifier that one thing dreadfully pressing and vital is occurring. However like the whole lot else within the movie, it’s as a substitute merely annoying. And what precisely is occurring anyway? Is the movie indicting cancel tradition, the #MeToo motion itself, or the insular bubble of educational life?
It is all too incoherent to get a straight reply, and nobody appears to know (besides perhaps Stuhlbarg) whether or not to play this as critical drama or histrionic cleaning soap opera. Both method, ‘After The Hunt’ is an empty mess that tries to say an excessive amount of about loads of completely different subjects, and finally ends up saying nothing in any respect.
‘After The Hunt’ receives a rating of 40 out of 100.
Julia Roberts stars as Alma in ‘After the Hunt’, from Amazon MGM Studios. Picture Credit score: Yannis Drakoulidis. © 2025 Amazon Content material Providers LLC. All Rights Reserved.
What’s the plot of ‘After The Hunt’?
A university professor is pressured to grapple together with her personal secretive previous after considered one of her colleagues is confronted with a critical accusation.
Who’s within the solid 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
(L to R) Julia Roberts as Alma, Michael Stuhlbarg as Frederik and Chloë Sevigny as Dr. Kim Sayers in ‘After the Hunt’, from Amazon MGM Studios. Picture Credit score: Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios. © 2025 Amazon Content material Providers LLC. All Rights Reserved.