Review: After The Hunt

Official Synopsis: A college professor Alma (Julia Roberts) finds herself at a personal and professional crossroads when a star pupil Maggie (Ayo Edeberi) levels an accusation against one of her colleagues, Hank (Andrew Garfield) and a dark secret from her own past threatens to come to light.

Luca Guadagnino is one of those directors that I keep trying to love. Often, I find myself lukewarm. I think highly of Call Me By Your Name and Challengers for the most part, they're not perfect, but the pros far outweigh the cons. With After The Hunt, I was so on board with what this film was doing for the longest time, until it felt like it was starting to interrogate me with endless "what ifs" then didn't even have the courtesy to answer all of them. I'm begging writers to stop using ambiguity as a crutch.

Materialists caught a bit of flack earlier this year for how it frames a character's sexual assault, but by the time this film was over, I think what After The Hunt does it almost more egregious. From the moment Maggie shares what happened to her with Alma, I never doubted her. And I think the end result is that we're supposed to all agree that Maggie is telling the truth. But the film keeps piling on other secrets of hers that are meant to ask us "Okay, what about now?" But I found that frustrating because just because someone does something bad, doesn't mean the other bad thing that happened to them didn't happen at all. And for a film that has arguably no 100% likable characters in it, it felt like a weird statement to make. 

Ayo is a fantastic actress but as the film went further along, the more I felt like she was a bit miscast. She fits the Maggie we meet at the beginning of the film but never seems to fully morph into what Maggie becomes. I've read that the character was re-written a bit when Ayo came on board and I'd love to know what the changes were, because as the film goes along, there's a big disconnect between what Maggie says she's feeling to how Ayo is actually playing her. 

Then there's Michael Stuhlbarg, another actor I love whose performance is great, but feels like it belongs in a different movie. He has some great scenes, and arguably some of the best lines in the film, but he also has parts that are so over the top that they made me question if I had missed something. 

On the brighter end, Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield give some of their best work. We spend the most time with Alma and somehow that doesn't seem like enough as her secrets start being revealed. To simplify things, I'd say she has 3 "big" secrets and only one of them feels like it was given the proper time. The other two could've used a bit more context. Garfield's character also disappears for half the film, which is a very bizarre choice considering the part he plays in Alma's life. Part of me is probably just salty because I thought he was giving the best performance and I wanted him on my screen more, but on the other hand, he had amazing chemistry with Roberts and I can't believe they wasted that.

The ending is what really bothered me because it just didn't make sense. For a film called AFTER the hunt. They really fumbled the "after" part. This had potential to be a great conversation about how different generations handle trauma, they get so close to that at times, but it ends up being a more shallow conversation on cancel culture. 

Your girl is bitter.

Grade: C