There’s a long history of filmmakers wading into difficult subjects. Many iconic films have taken on difficult and timely subjects, exploring nuance and experience to tell their stories. That’s clearly the hope for After The Hunt, a new film director Luca Guadagnino, which opens Friday, Oct. 17.
The film is set at Yale. It opens with a note that this really happened at Yale. But this isn’t a biopic—it’s a fictionalized take from writer Nora Garrett about two professors, a student, and a painful accusation.
In After the Hunt, Alma (Julia Roberts) is a successful philosophy professor on the verge of tenure. We open as she and her husband—Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg)—are hosting a party for colleagues and students. Among the guests are Hank (Andrew Garfield), a fellow philosophy professor, and Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), Alma’s brightest young student.
Their conversations are about a lot of difficult topics. Also, up for discussion is tenure—with Alma and Hank both in line to possibly get it. Would one or the other missing out harm their friendship? It’s a question that lingers in the air.
The party ends. The guests leave. Hank and Maggie head out together. The next day, Maggie is missing. She turns up at Alma’s apartment. She shares her story of the night with Hank. The next day Hank shares his story of their encounter. It all puts Alma in the middle of a situation that quickly turns into a powder keg.
A messy narrative in After the Hunt
The writer John Patrick Shanley looked at the aftermath of a dangerous accusation in his stage play Doubt, later turned into a searing film. There is an accusation of wrongdoing at the heart of the plot, but the film is mostly about exceptional actors in rooms having powerful discussions. The question of what really happened is never actually answered, but it’s a powerful exploration of the concept. It quickly became one of my favorite films.
I don’t know if Garrett had that in mind, but in some ways, After The Hunt reminds me of that style. The truth of what happened that night between Hank and Maggie is never definitively answered. Instead, this is about these three people, their brokenness, their flaws, and their ambitions. It’s meant to be more of a character study. That can be fascinating, but it’s a tough line to walk.
This story sadly falls short. There are a lot of big, dramatic sequences. But they often lack pop because we don’t get enough of a feel for these three people or why we should care. The script spends the most time focused on Alma, but even her character feels a bit too thinly drawn. These seem to be shallow, manipulative people from the jump, which makes it hard to care about their potential downfall.
Stumbles in the production
It doesn’t help that the craft here makes some decisions that don’t work. Guadagnino has made some beautiful and passionate films in recent years. They are works that evoke a passionate response. By contrast, this feels almost entirely dispassionate. From the curious choices of shots—which often leave you feeling outside the action and emotion of the scene—to a flat looking production it’s just not visually engaging.
His films have also been noteworthy for taking chances with the score. That has sometimes yielded mixed results. I actually loved the bold choice with the Challengers score last year but understood some of the complaints. This film’s score—from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross—is beyond frustrating. It doesn’t feel complimentary and often serves as a further distraction in a film full of them.
It doesn’t help that the performances all seem flat, or worse. While I enjoyed Stuhlbarg and some of the chaotic energy he brought to his scenes, the rest felt stiff or possibly miscast. Some of the smaller supporting roles certainly felt miscast to the point of distraction. If you told me we’d have a film featuring Edebiri, Roberts, Garfield, Stuhlbarg, and Chloe Sevigny from Guadagnino I would be thrilled, yet the reality here is another underwhelming aspect of this high-profile swing.
After The Hunt tackles an important topic but doesn’t seem to do it justice. It doesn’t add much to the cultural moment or the cultural conversation, either. That combined with some mediocre filmmaking, makes this one of the bigger disappointments of the fall so far.
After The Hunt opens nationwide on Friday, Oct. 17 and goes to Prime Video on Friday, Oct. 24.