As both of his standout 2024 films showed (Challengers and Queer), Luca Guadagnino remains a master of visual storytelling, one of the finest working today. The opening 30 minutes of his latest, After the Hunt, play like a masterclass in mise en scène, his spatial and visual orchestration at its sharpest. These are sequences you could pause and dissect for layers of meaning, from where characters stand to what they wear and how they react to each line, often leaving you unsure where to place your eyes. The use of light, color, and performance choices is just as meticulous. It’s a shame, then, that he is bound to such a bland and weak script. Guadagnino seems to recognize this himself, because after that bravura opening half hour, he checks out. A shame, given how much potential the premise holds, especially in the hands of a director like him.
The film focuses on the dynamic between four main characters. Alma (Julia Roberts) is a philosophy professor, ambitious and admired. Hank (Andrew Garfield) is her colleague, both friend and adversary, much calmer and looser in demeanor. Maggie (Ayo Edebiri) is the daughter of a wealthy couple, Alma’s student and protégé. And finally, Frederick (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a psychiatrist and Alma’s husband. After a party that introduces each character and the dynamics soon to be twisted, Hank walks Maggie home. The next day Maggie doesn’t show up for class, but later appears at Alma’s door accusing Hank of ‘crossing the line.’ Hank, however, insists he hasn’t done anything and that Maggie is only trying to deflect after he called her out for plagiarism. The film turns this dispute, and Alma’s choice of whom to believe, into a chess game of clashing interests and loyalties, framed as a “battle of generations” that raises questions about social justice, trauma, ambiguity, and feminism. Whether it actually explores those questions with any real depth is another story.
One thing that Nora Garrett’s script (her first major feature) does recognize is how easy it has become to point fingers at any side and find fault. In a society where digital platforms give everyone a megaphone, and outrage, accusations, and callouts are rewarded by algorithms, judgment has turned into performance. The writer and director have repeatedly insisted that the film is not a MeToo story, and that’s true, but it is also not not a MeToo film. It wants to be about many things at once, and like Eddington earlier this year, it fires in all directions, seeming content just to spark conversation. By covering twenty or so topics, there’s bound to be something for each viewer to latch onto. The issue is that the script confuses provocation for insight. Like a TikTok rant designed to go viral, it sparks reaction but doesn’t build toward understanding. It can get the conversation started, but it never dares to follow through with perspective or solutions.
At least the morally gray line gives the actors plenty to work with, and both Julia Roberts and Michael Stuhlbarg make the most of it. Alma gives Roberts her best role in quite some time, and she chews into it with real appetite. Watching her calculate where to stand or carefully choose each word is riveting, a pleasure in itself. Stuhlbarg, meanwhile, is the most relaxed of the performers and once again emerges as the acting highlight in a Guadagnino film, entertaining in every scene. His psychiatrist feels almost like Guadagnino’s stand-in: he figures everything out in the opening moments, spells it out for us, and then drifts off to blast loud music in another room. Garfield and especially Edebiri, on the other hand, strain for theatricality, weighed down by clunky dialogue that no amount of pauses or expressions can soften. Both end up feeling artificial at times, and flat-out annoying in others.
No actor, strong as they may be, can overcome how the script shouts its ideas through dialogue and rarely lets us simply observe. Alma and Hank’s conflict, as well as Alma’s shifting feelings toward Maggie, are spelled out in full rather than shown. We believe what the characters feel only because they tell us so.
Guadagnino’s own care seems to dissipate: the early precision with mirrors, framing, and playful blocking gives way to flat coverage and obvious choices, like the clumsy hospital color shift. Even the score works against the film. From the opening ticking clock onward, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross underline every idea in the loudest possible way.
By the end, After the Hunt never lands on a conclusion or meaningful point. What it leaves behind is a reminder of the gap still waiting to be filled: a film that directly stages Gen Z colliding with older generations in workplaces, politics, or families, like a modern The Graduate or Rebel Without a Cause. Guadagnino, like Ari Aster earlier in the year, seems to glimpse that possibility but never seizes it. Finger-pointing alone cannot carry a story. For that, I may as well scroll TikTok reels.
This is part of Reviews On Reels TIFF 2025 Coverage. Due to the hectic rhythm of a film festival, it may be tweaked in the future.
Still courtesy of TIFF.