After The Hunt Review: Swing and Miss from Luca Guadagnino

Alex Schlerf
Oct 22
6 min read

Director Luca Guadagnino (Challengers, Call Me By Your Name) returns for After The Hunt, featuring a story with many relevant social themes.

Synopsis:

A college professor (Julia Roberts) finds herself at a personal and professional crossroad when a star student (Ayo Edebiri) levels an accusation against one of her colleagues (Andrew Garfield), threatening to expose a dark secret from her own past.

Cast: Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri, Michael Stuhlbarg, Chloë Sevigny

Release Date: In Theaters Now

Phenomenal Ensemble Cast

You'll find very quickly that I have many more problems than positives for this film, but the one standout is the ensemble cast. You've got all known commodities alongside the ever-rising Edebiri, allowing for at least an enjoyable time watching these incredible actors give their absolute best. As for all of Luca's films, he asks for a really personal and emotional performance from all of his main trio. Roberts is the person we focus on the most for the runtime and she is on point as usual. She leaves the audience very confused on her characters motivation and backstory due to the way she plays it out. Once her facade of calm and control does break down, we see her really leaning into her insane nature. It's simply really fun to see her acting her heart out in a film again and it's a shame the script holds it back from being something that would get her awards love. There would have been no way I would've been engaged with the film as much as I was if not for her incredible performance.

Roberts shares equal time with both Edebiri and Garfield, with both standing out for different reasons. Garfield really has to distance himself from the roles he typically plays. Although if he's a villain or not is left up for the audience to figure out as the movie goes on, it's not debatable that he has to be kind of an emotional jerk for a lot of the film. Something like this comes naturally to an actor as talented as him. There's even some real mental breakdowns from his character throughout the film that become eye-opening because of Garfield's acting. I was worried when the first act of the film didn't ask for much from Edebiri acting-wise, but eventually she gets a chance to really show out. Edebiri has been recognized for her work on The Bear, but never fully for a feature film role. This breaks that trend, with her becoming an amazing scene partner for Roberts. It's very impressive the way she's able to challenge her as both an actor and as her character. Lastly, you get a very enjoyable performance from Michael Stuhlbarg. He's not really close to any of the top three in screen time, but it's a hilarious role for him and one character that you can find yourself sympathizing with at points. This film didn't do much right for me, but at least it has some standout acting performances to keep you somewhat intrigued.

Painful Script and Dialogue

One problem that arises very early on is that the actors have to work really hard to elevate the material that they've been given. This film is generally slow in nature, which is fine as long as the story is engaging and the dialogue is working. Sadly, it didn't achieve either of those things. There's so many long scenes between two or three actors and the dialogue just doesn't do enough to keep you intrigued. It feels like it's either trying to say too many things at once or just completely failing at creating anything interesting. You'll be so mesmerized by the performances that it won't click in the moment, but then you'll look back and think: "Did that actually make any sense?" More on that specifically later, but it just makes for a really boring watch when a dialogue-heavy film doesn't even feature interesting dialogue. At the end of the day, that's the main thing that hurts After The Hunt - it's just not that entertaining. Not every movie needs to focus on entertainment value, but when it also fails at saying anything deeper then you've got a big problem. With the performances they were getting out of the cast, it's really sad to recognize how good the movie could have been if they'd received a better script.

Messy Exploration of Big Themes

As I mentioned before, a movie can start lacking in the general entertainment value if it makes up for it in the deeper messaging. However, this film doesn't do that right either. It's definitely not without big themes, with the entire film being an exploration of the current narratives around sexual assault. Just reading the premise, it seems like a concept that can offer a really nuanced exploration of these themes that are so relevant in the year 2025. Instead of that, it painfully tries to be self aware and achieves the exact opposite affect. At the end of the day, it feels really out of touch and a pointless exploration of these deeper themes. With the endless twists and turns happening to our main characters, it's really impossible to see what they were actually trying to say by the end of the movie. I don't want to hear that the story is a "much ado about nothing" type movie because that's not at all how it was played out for 99% of the film. When you choose to tackle these themes, you have to actually provide a takeaway or something that gets the audience thinking about things differently. This film doesn't do that at all.

The ending is also just flat out strange. It's really impossible to get into it without spoilers, but it feels like you wandered into an entirely different film once the last two minutes come around. It's shot differently, the actors are playing their characters in a way we haven't seen all film long and it ends abruptly. You think you might see what they are going for and then it takes a complete 180 with that final scene. Maybe there's some overarching meta narrative going on that I'm missing, but I find that somewhat hard to believe.

Score and Directing Shockingly Fall Flat

The main reason I was excited for this film was the cast, but then after that was it being a Luca Guadagnino film. I thought Challengers was not only one of the best films of last year, but its also recently snuck a spot into my all time top ten. I thought his directing style in that film was so impressive that it became a main character of its own. You could say the same for his directing in this film, but unfortunately it's not for good reasons. I just think he takes some strange directing choices, specifically with his framing. A lot of the scenes are shot from a distance and it really tends to dampen the emotion from the actors. Although I understand this is much less of an action-packed story, I was sad that it featured really none of the creativity directing-wise that Challengers did. He also tends to have a weird focus on zooming in on certain body parts in the film, including hands and foreheads, which just completely felt odd for me. If a director's style doesn't standout to me at all I usually just won't comment on it, but I have to when it's bad enough that it's genuinely affecting my viewing experience.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have provided me with some of my favorite film scores of all time in Challengers and The Social Network. Even Tron: Ares recently had a score from them that had me playing it on repeat once I left the theater. Sadly, their score in this film doesn't resemble anything like those amazing examples. First off, there barely is a hint of their score in the first place. There's a slower beat that plays throughout a lot of the scenes, but besides from that I could count on one hand the amount of times I heard anything of note score-wise. Even when we do hear some musical notes, it's just not fitting the tone of the film. Their style worked for Challengers because it tended to be a more tense story, but this film just seemed like it was too far outside their style.

Final Thoughts

After The Hunt has quickly gone from one of my most anticipated films of the year to the most disappointing one. You had all the ingredients for an amazing film: standout cast, talented filmmaking team and one of the best composing duos in the world. It's really a shock that a film could be as bad as this was with all those elements, but here we are.

Rating: 2/5 Stars

After The Hunt is currently ranked 62nd out of the 78 new releases that I've seen this year.

Editor's Note: I've only included the top 20 from my 2025 new releases list, for editing purposes.