After the Hunt: When a Great Director Makes a Not-So-Great Movie
Over the past ten or so years, Luca Guadagnino has cemented himself as one of the greatest directors of the era. With works spanning genres and languages, and earning him nominations for numerous prestigious awards – Academy Awards, Golden Globes, and BAFTAs – Guadagnino has had a great run, especially in the past few years. Impressively, his big-name films Challengers and Queer both came out in 2024, and After the Hunt quickly followed in late 2025.
I was personally lucky enough to watch an advance screening of After the Hunt as part of the Ivy Film Festival. On a cold, dark Thursday, I, along with a few dozen others, filed into the Granoff Martinos Auditorium, skeptical but excited. I had glanced at the Letterboxd reviews beforehand, and I was surprised at how low the average rating was (the director’s most viewed films sit with average ratings of 3.7-3.9/5, while After the Hunt is currently scored at a much lower 3.0). I also had not heard a peep about this film before I saw it screening. Given the press which I distinctly remember surrounding such films as Call Me By Your Name and Bones and All, I found it odd that After the Hunt would be brought out with – basically – no fanfare.
When the film finally concluded (after a brutal 139 minutes), the audience tumbled out onto Thayer Street in a confused mass. I heard someone ask their friend, “What the f— was that?” Well— I’ll tell you.
After the Hunt follows Julia Roberts as Alma Imhoff, a Yale philosophy professor whose PhD student Maggie (Ayo Edebiri) accuses her close friend and colleague (Andrew Garfield) of rape. The central crisis of the film is Imhoff struggling to decide whose side to take. Simultaneously disgusted by her colleague and distrusting of her student, the film weaves together threads of Imhoff’s marital discord, struggle with substance abuse, and reckoning with her own past.
Rest assured, After the Hunt is as gorgeous as any of Guadagnino’s works. In the same visual language as his Suspiria remake, the cinematography focuses enthusiastically on the academic setting, dwelling on the grand quads and halls of Yale. The shots of building interiors are especially delightful, tender, and deliberate. The on-screen textures of the film are fabulous: Fluffy, snowy scenes complementing some of the more brutalist, architectural edges. The aesthetics of urban, collegiate, and personal life blend seamlessly from one act to another.
Unfortunately, this is where my praise of the film ends. (Well, the score isn’t bad either. Trent Reznor returns to collaborate with Guadagnino after Bones and All. The sound is different, but still delightful.) The tone of the film is vastly inconsistent. After the Hunt seems to fashion itself as a grand, swooping drama – the tone of which is undercut by the attempts at comedy, which work occasionally, but largely just weigh down any statement which the film tries to make. It gets to the point where, at times, this really feels like it’s just a comedy about rape, without actually being funny or about rape.
Roberts and Edebiri give good performances, but both are clearly limited by the writing they have to work with. Much like the unsuccessful tonal breadth, the film also suffers from wrestling with far too many plot points and social issues. In trying to tackle too many topics, the grandiose endeavor that is After the Hunt fails to adequately comment on anything.
It’s a film that, essentially, came out four or five years too late. It’s a #MeToo deconstruction from 10 years after the news cycle began to focus on these narratives. It’s a cautionary tale without meaning. And in a social moment which has swung so far in the other direction, this narrative feels a little more punch down-y than punching adjacently. In fact, having ruminated on After the Hunt for a few weeks now, I still do not really understand what Guadagnino and writer Nora Garrett want the audience to take away. There’s nothing wrong with a film not having a meaning or message, but the sweeping run time and grandiose style of it all beg to be understood while remaining elusive.
Ultimately, I’m left with a bad taste in my mouth. After the Hunt feels nihilistic and ultimately cruel. It at once suggests that higher education is corrupt and preposterous, but also that proven intellect is the only valid metric of a person, that wealth and systems built on it are evil, yet actively shies away from providing even a shadow of another perspective, and that these factors determine whether rape accusations should be believed. Guadagnino’s other films are, on the surface, not so socio-politically engaged. Perhaps, then, this is not his domain. Or perhaps not even a great director could have saved this screenplay.