After the Hunt Review: Bold, Brainy, and Uneven — You Won’t Stop Talking About It

Julia Roberts electrifies in Luca Guadagnino’s #MeToo drama After the Hunt—a provocative, compelling ride that still hits a few bumps.
I love that Luca Guadagnino keeps swinging for the fences. Even when one misses for me — hi, Queer — the next one usually connects. After the Hunt is the prickliest thing he has made yet. It does not all click, but I could not look away.
What it is
Plot setup: Alma (Julia Roberts) is a Yale philosophy professor on the edge of tenure, married to a rich, doting mensch (Michael Stuhlbarg), and adored on campus. Her closest friend and colleague, Hank (Andrew Garfield), is the charming younger prof everyone flirts with. Then a student, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), accuses Hank of sexual assault — and Alma finds herself stuck between her loyalty to him and the student who idolizes her.
The uncomfortable center
This is the sort of story you were not seeing greenlit a few years ago. The allegation involves a young, gay student of color, and the film dares to leave room for uncertainty about what happened. In an earlier era, Maggie would have been framed as the unambiguous hero. Here, she is complicated on purpose, and the movie asks you to decide what — and who — you believe.
Roberts, weaponized
Roberts plays Alma like a glacier in heels: brilliant, brittle, and entirely secure in her campus royalty. She has three people who would walk through fire for her — her husband, Hank, and Maggie — and she treats that devotion as a given. When the accusation hits, Alma does not lead with compassion; she treats it like a mess intruding on her immaculate life. Guadagnino never sands down her edges, and Roberts leans in. It is one of her iciest turns, and the film argues she does not need to be likable to be riveting.
Edebiri, thorny by design
Maggie is going to split audiences, and that is the point. She is the ultra-privileged daughter of billionaires. She has a non-binary partner she seems to parade more than cherish. She might be plagiarizing. And she might also be a survivor. The movie’s question is deliberately queasy: does her messiness make her less worthy of empathy? It should not, but the way it plays out forces you to interrogate that reflex in real time.
The supporting men
Garfield’s Hank is the smooth operator you know you should keep at arm’s length but somehow never do. Stuhlbarg, as Alma’s endlessly patient spouse, feels sketched in; he gets a couple of genuine flashes of anger, yet you are still left wondering why he puts up with a chill that borders on cruelty.
Guadagnino being Guadagnino
Few directors at his level are this uncompromising. Not every one lands for me — Queer was a slog — but the ambition is the point, and this one is going to polarize on contact. The film’s moral fog gives it a distinctly European vibe, and intellectually it crackles. What holds it back are the indulgences. The Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross score, usually a cheat code with Guadagnino, feels oddly mismatched here, turning a campus chamber piece into a pulse-pounding paranoia machine that keeps pulling focus. It is like someone glued a neurotic talky drama to a Kubrickian anxiety hum.
The best scene (and the most telling)
An early faculty party nails the social temperature: middle-aged Gen-X professors are strangely handsy and flirty, while the younger scholars recoil at the boundary blurring. David Bowie’s Underground from the Labyrinth soundtrack blares on the stereo — a funny, hyper-specific needle drop that says more about these people than any monologue could.
Who is who (quick hit)
- Alma (Julia Roberts): Yale philosophy star, tenure-track, adored and terrifying in equal measure.
- Hank (Andrew Garfield): Alma’s closest colleague; charming, flirt-forward, accused.
- Maggie (Ayo Edebiri): Alma’s student; gay, a student of color, ultra-wealthy background; complicated and possibly plagiarizing — and possibly a victim.
- Alma’s husband (Michael Stuhlbarg): wealthy, devoted, underwritten.
- Score: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross — ambitious but overcaffeinated for this material.
Bottom line
After the Hunt is messy, indulgent, and sometimes exasperating — but never dull. It forces you to sit in the discomfort and think about your own biases. Guadagnino stays fearless about poking the hornet’s nest, and that alone makes it worth the watch.
Score: 7/10 (good)