This article contains spoilers.

After the Hunt, Luca Guadagnino’s psychological thriller about the fallout from the #MeToo movement, has been in theatres for only a few days, but it already feels dated. It’s a memento of the micro-era, towards the exhausted end of Joe Biden’s presidency, when the backlash against self-righteous progressivism was cresting, and taking on sanctimonious college students seemed, at least in some circles, like a brave provocation.

Now, at a moment of ferocious Trump government repression of the campus left, After the Hunt is a bit of a silly anachronism. It’s interesting mostly for what it inadvertently reveals about the seething resentments that helped set the stage for today’s right-wing crackdown.

Julia Roberts as Alma in After the Hunt.Credit: Yannis Drakoulidis

“It has gotten so hard for me to listen to these kids, when they have had everything, everything handed to them in their lives, insist that the world stop at the first small injustice,” says a school counsellor, played by Chloe Sevigny, using an obscenity. That peevish spirit animates much of the movie, which turns on not one but two possibly made-up allegations of sexual abuse.

In 2018, Democratic strategist Aaron Huertas coined the term “reactionary centrism” to describe a style of politics that prides itself on even-handedness while being........

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