Andrew Garfield as Hank and Julia Roberts as Alma. Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios Copyright: © 2025 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved

After the momentous one-two punch of tennis love triangle Challengers and magical realist travelogue Queer, Luca Guadagnino tries to press his finger firmly on the cultural pulse, with a psychological drama about aspersions and accusations at an elite university. Unfortunately, he slips and presses the nearby self-destruct button instead. The star-studded After the Hunt has a lot on its mind about human complexities, but largely expresses these notions in didactic form and through dramatic conflict that all but resolves itself halfway through the movie’s languid 2 hours and 18 minutes.

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The film is at its most intriguing in the handful of scenes that are stripped of all dialogue and temporal logic—like its opening montage, during which well-liked Yale psychology professor Alma Olsson (Julia Roberts) gets ready for the day and performs her duties at her cushy adjunct job, on the verge of being granted tenure. The soundscape is sapped of all sound, including music. A........

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