---
title: "After the Hunt"
year: 2025
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/after-the-hunt"
fi1m_id: "after-the-hunt"
imdb_id: "tt32159989"
tmdb_id: 1265063
wikidata_id: "Q127382372"
fi1m_score: 57
critics_score: 56
critics_reviews: 12
published: "2026-09-09"
updated: "2026-09-18T08:37:48.903500+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# After the Hunt (2025)

Directed by Luca Guadagnino · 2h 19m · MPA R · Drama

## Identity

After the Hunt

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/after-the-hunt
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** after-the-hunt
- **IMDb ID:** tt32159989
- **TMDB ID:** 1265063
- **Wikidata ID:** Q127382372
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32159989/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/1265063, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q127382372

**Fi1m score: 57** · Critics 56 from 12 reviews

*In a sentence:* Two hours of philosophers refusing to answer a question, scored to a clock that never stops ticking

> Luca Guadagnino gives Julia Roberts her best role in years, as a philosophy professor who would rather not choose between an accused friend and an accusing student. The film shares her reluctance, and at 139 minutes it has a long time to be undecided in.

## Synopsis

Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts) teaches philosophy at Yale and is weeks away from a decision on tenure. At a dinner party in the flat she shares with her husband Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a psychoanalyst, her brightest doctoral student, Maggie Resnick (Ayo Edebiri), and her closest colleague, Hank Gibson (Andrew Garfield), leave together. The next day Maggie comes to Alma with an account of what happened afterwards, and Hank comes with a different one. Alma must decide who to believe, or whether she can avoid deciding at all, while the department, the students and a past she has kept quiet all press on her. Chloë Sevigny plays a colleague; Luca Guadagnino directs from a script by Nora Garrett, who also appears as Billie.

## Review

Luca Guadagnino has made a campus drama about an accusation, and about a woman who would rather not have a view on it. Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts) teaches philosophy at Yale and is weeks from a decision on tenure. At a dinner party in her flat, her favourite student, Maggie Resnick (Ayo Edebiri), and her closest colleague, Hank Gibson (Andrew Garfield), leave together; the next morning Maggie tells Alma what she says he did. *After the Hunt* is well acted and carefully built, and it runs 139 minutes, most of which it spends refusing to say what it thinks. That is meant to be the point. It is also the problem.

Roberts is the reason to see it. She plays Alma as a woman who has built her whole manner out of not reacting: the cigarette, the slow blink, the answer that turns out to be another question. When Maggie comes to her office with the accusation, Roberts lets something cross her face for about a second and then shuts it, and for the next hour the film is about waiting to see what will get through. Edebiri, cast against the warmth she is known for, makes Maggie watchful and hard to like. Garfield plays Hank as a man whose charm has never once been questioned. Michael Stuhlbarg, as Alma’s husband Frederik, a psychoanalyst who cooks and listens, has the film’s funniest scenes and its saddest.

Malik Hassan Sayeed shoots the campus in browns and low golds, grainy and lamplit, so that every room looks as if it has been smoked in for thirty years. Stefano Baisi’s flat is dark wood and full shelves; Giulia Piersanti dresses Alma in men’s tailoring and a camel coat. The opening credits come up in the typeface Woody Allen has used for decades, which is a joke about the film’s subject and a risky one. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross score it with a ticking clock and low, dry percussion, mixed high and often running under ordinary conversation, so that the film sounds like a thriller even when two people are discussing a committee.

We should say what we felt. The scene in the office held us completely: two faces, a door that stays closed, Roberts choosing every word as if it might be quoted back to her, and Edebiri watching her choose. A later dinner, at which Hank arrives drunk and Frederik keeps serving food, is nearly as good. Then the second hour began, and we noticed we were counting Alma’s cigarettes, and then that we were annoyed with ourselves for counting them. The trouble is the pattern: Nora Garrett’s script sets up a confrontation, lets it run until somebody is about to say something that cannot be taken back, and then cuts to the next morning.

That script, Garrett’s first, is the trouble. The students talk like the comments under an article and the professors talk like the article, and nobody is given a line the other side could not have predicted. Alma has a secret, signalled from the start with pills and a bad stomach, and when it is finally spoken the film deals with it in a couple of minutes and moves on. Marco Costa cuts every dinner and every walk across the quad at full length. Twenty-five minutes could go and no argument would be lost, because the arguments are the same one, restated.

Against Guadagnino’s recent work it is a step back. [*Challengers*](https://film.one/film/challengers) (2024) was about three people who wanted things and moved like it; *Call Me by Your Name* (2017) knew what it felt and let us feel it. The comparison everyone reaches for is *Tár* (2022), which took a difficult woman and stayed with her to the end. Alma is not difficult in that way, and the film will not stay with anyone.

The tagline says not everything is supposed to make you comfortable. We were not, but it was the discomfort of a dinner where the host keeps changing the subject. See it for Roberts and for Stuhlbarg at the stove, at home, where you can pause it and finish the argument yourselves.

*Fi1m score 57, published 9 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

The reviews are split widely, from outright dismissal to something close to a rave, and the consensus lands in the middle. Almost everyone agrees on Julia Roberts: her frosty, hard-drinking philosophy professor is praised across the board, with several calling it her best work in years. Guadagnino’s direction, the Ivy League atmosphere and the pacing also draw consistent credit.

The reservations cluster on the script. Most critics find the film’s handling of a campus accusation muddled and evasive, its ambiguity contrived rather than earned, and its characters thin; more than one invokes Tár as the film it wants to be and is not. The strongest dissent comes from The Times and The Telegraph, which take it as a nasty, exhilarating moral thriller and admire it for that. The harshest verdicts, including the Evening Standard’s, call it a self-important slog that wastes its cast. A minority, Digital Spy among them, reads the same refusal to settle the question as the point.

## Straight answers

**Is After the Hunt worth watching?**

*After the Hunt* is a well-acted, handsomely built campus drama that spends most of its 139 minutes refusing to say what it thinks, and we scored it 57. Julia Roberts gives her best performance in years as a philosophy professor caught between an accused colleague and an accusing student, and Michael Stuhlbarg is quietly superb. The second hour repeats its one argument until we grew restless.

**How long is After the Hunt, and what is it rated?**

*After the Hunt* runs 2h 19m and is rated R by the MPA in the US. It is a drama film.

**Where can I watch After the Hunt in the US?**

*After the Hunt* is streaming on Amazon Prime Video in the US. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service.

**How violent or frightening is After the Hunt, and is it suitable for children?**

*After the Hunt* is a 15 certificate in the UK and R in the US, with no on-screen violence to speak of; the difficulty is all in the talk. It concerns an accusation of sexual assault, discussed at length but not shown, alongside heavy drinking, smoking and adult language. It is not for children, and teenagers may find two hours of academics arguing hard going.

**How does After the Hunt compare to TÁR?**

*After the Hunt* reaches for what [*TÁR*](https://film.one/film/tar) did, a long, cold portrait of a difficult woman in a powerful institution, and falls short of it. Both films decline to tell us what to think, but *TÁR* stays with its conductor to the end, while Guadagnino's professor is kept at arm's length and her story cuts away whenever it turns dangerous. *TÁR* is the better film; see this one for Roberts.

**What should I watch after After the Hunt?**

After *After the Hunt*, try [*Tár*](https://film.one/film/tar) (2022, Fi1m 84): The difficult woman at the podium, and a film that stays with her. Then [*Anatomy of a Fall*](https://film.one/film/anatomy-of-a-fall) (2023, Fi1m 86): Sandra Hüller on trial, with the truth kept just out of the courtroom; and [*I Am Love*](https://film.one/film/i-am-love) (2009, Fi1m 81): Guadagnino when he trusted a dinner table and a woman’s face to carry everything.

### Reviews we read (21)

- **The Times**, Kevin Maher (90/100, inferred): Guadagnino stampedes through the culture wars with this extraordinary tale of tested loyalties and difficult truths. Julia Roberts delivers the performance of her career as the hard-drinking, heavy-smoking professor caught in an impossible dilemma. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/after-the-hunt-review-julia-roberts-will-win-an-oscar-for-this-metoo-story-ch0qg375h)
- **The Telegraph** (80/100, inferred): Julia Roberts is back to her best in a devilish cancel culture thriller. Guadagnino’s film is a nastily exhilarating moral thriller that leads characters and audience into an ethical quagmire, with Roberts magnetic as the philosophy professor. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/julia-roberts-after-the-hunt-review/)
- **Empire**, Laura Venning (65/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a colder, more cynical campus thriller than Guadagnino's recent work, with confused politics and a script that falls short of its ambitions, but praises its pacing, visual flair, strong performances especially from Roberts, and overall entertainment value as a sharply intense watch. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/after-the-hunt/)
- **The Observer**, Wendy Ide (60/100, inferred): After the Hunt is a slippery, high-stakes drama that explores cancel culture through a lens of distancing cynicism. It is a clever, provocative work that is not always as smart as it thinks it is, with a savagery to the storytelling that is bracing and top-tier performances. [Read](https://observer.co.uk/culture/film/article/after-the-hunt-isnt-as-clever-as-it-thinks-it-is)
- **Vulture**, Bilge Ebiri (60/100, inferred): The film is absorbing and well-acted with rich Ivy League atmosphere but not the heady intellectual drama it aims to be. It singles out the uniformly excellent cast, particularly Julia Roberts' stony anxiousness. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/article/review-after-the-hunt-doesnt-have-that-much-to-say.html)
- **Film Comment**, Genevieve Yue (40/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a flimsy fantasy of Yale with weak characters and conflicts, though praises Julia Roberts' performance as the frosty Alma. Complains about the lack of depth in depicting university life and intellectual elements. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/reflections-from-damaged-life-after-the-hunt-luca-guadagnino-review/)
- **The Hollywood Reporter**, David Rooney (35/100, inferred): The film is too deliberately opaque and frustrating despite some absorbing confrontations. It singles out Julia Roberts' strong, riveting performance as ill-served by the cryptic script. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/after-the-hunt-review-julia-roberts-luca-guadagnino-1236356837/)
- **The Guardian** (30/100, inferred): Guadagnino misfires with this bafflingly overlong, overwrought #MeToo campus accusation drama. The film becomes an evasive and noncommittal jumble of ideas, with the laboriously nurtured ambiguity turning contrived and inert. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/aug/29/after-the-hunt-review-julia-roberts-luca-guadagnino-ayo-edebiri-andrew-garfield-yale)
- **Evening Standard**, India Block (20/100, inferred): The critic calls the film a self-important slog that wastes its stellar cast on thin, mean-spirited caricatures and overlong plotting, criticizing its dated campus drama approach, poor sound mixing, and lack of genuine depth or engagement. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/after-the-hunt-film-review-julia-roberts-ayo-edebiri-b1252669.html)
- **Los Angeles Times**, Amy Nicholson: The critic says the film flunks out as a pretend-provocative noir that provokes only frustration. They single out the actors’ committed performances amid a story that fails to deliver real discomfort or insight. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-10-09/after-the-hunt-review-julia-roberts-andrew-garfield-ayo-edebiri-luca-guadagnino)
- **Radio Times**, James Mottram (★★☆☆☆): The critic calls the film muddled and overly reliant on academic debates that may alienate viewers, comparing it unfavorably to stronger works like Tár. It singles out Julia Roberts' relish in the role and gradual unraveling for praise amid the privileged, hypocritical characters and uneven execution. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/app/after-the-hunt-review-this-julia-roberts-academia-drama-doesnt-make-the-grade/)
- **Sight and Sound**: The critic finds the film a muddled #MeToo campus drama that emulates TÁR but lacks its savagery and feels dated. It singles out Julia Roberts' committed performance for praise while criticizing the overworked plot, inconsistent characters, and reliance on provocative but ultimately toothless themes. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/after-hunt-luca-guadagninos-overworked-campus-drama-designed-provoke-ends-feeling-dated)
- **The New Yorker**: The critic calls the film a pleasurably ludicrous house of cards that excites Guadagnino more for its stylistic and performative pleasures than its ethical conundrums. They single out the luxurious direction and Roberts’s intense performance in a character-assassination rant. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/10/13/after-the-hunt-movie-review)
- **The New York Times**, Alissa Wilkinson: The critic finds Luca Guadagnino’s campus drama uncomfortable for the wrong reasons as it falls flat trying to court controversy. They single out the overly calculated, signposted style that insists on spelling out every point. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/movies/after-the-hunt-review.html)
- **Variety**, Owen Gleiberman: The critic finds the film a muddled drama of sexual accusation with good acting and craft but too many contrivances and unanswered questions. They single out the tense atmosphere and Roberts’s sardonic performance while noting it falls short of satisfying. [Read](https://variety.com/2025/film/reviews/after-the-hunt-review-julia-roberts-luca-guadagnino-1236501798/)
- **Digital Spy**, Isabella Silvers (75/100, inferred): The film raises provocative questions about privilege, feminism, and the generation gap without dictating a single moral; it's a psychological thriller that asks viewers to think for themselves. Praises the complex characters and nuanced approach to #MeToo themes. [Read](https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a69070087/after-the-hunt-me-too-ending/)
- **The Playlist**, Rafa Sales Ross (C+): The critic views Guadagnino’s drama as a restrained exploration of cancel culture and ambition in academia, highlighting Julia Roberts’ compelling, bitter performance as the standout element. While praising technical choices and supporting work from Michael Stuhlbarg, the review finds the film hesitant to fully engage with its provocative themes, resulting in polished but unsubstantial treatment of morality and generational conflict. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/after-the-hunt-review-luca-guadagninos-restrained-take-on-cancel-culture-is-julia-roberts-best-performance-in-years-venice-20250829/)
- **The Skinny**, Iana Murray (3/5): Julia Roberts gives one of her best performances, but the wordy screenplay makes it feel like an exhaustive debate rather than compelling drama. Praises visual style and score, but criticizes lack of tension. [Read](https://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/new-releases/after-the-hunt)
- **Collider**, Nate Richard: The film has interesting ideas but feels messy and shallow despite strong performances from its leads. It stumbles in trying to be morally gray and provocative like Tár, with on-the-nose dialogue and an unfulfilling ending. [Read](https://collider.com/after-the-hunt-review-julia-roberts-andrew-garfield-luca-guadagnino/)
- **Deadline**, Damon Wise: The review praises Julia Roberts’ superb performance as a philosophy professor in this biting campus #MeToo drama, calling it her best work in years and a casting coup. It notes the timely examination of progressive politics on campus while finding some tenure conversations tedious. [Read](https://deadline.com/2025/08/after-the-hunt-review-julia-roberts-luca-guadagnino-andrew-garfield-1236501325/)
- **The Wrap**, Steve Pond: The critic finds the film stylish and twisty as it explores hot-button campus issues like race, privilege, power dynamics and wokeness through strong performances. It highlights the provocative, self-aware narrative that leaves central questions unanswered while delivering fun in a serious way. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/after-the-hunt-review-julia-roberts-ayo-edebiri-luca-guadagnino/)

## Details

- **Director:** Luca Guadagnino
- **Director:** Luca Guadagnino
- **Writer:** Nora Garrett
- **Cinematography:** Malik Hassan Sayeed
- **Editor:** Marco Costa
- **Music:** Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross
- **Production design:** Stefano Baisi
- **Costume design:** Giulia Piersanti
- **Producer:** Brian Grazer, Allan Mandelbaum, Luca Guadagnino
- **Cast:** Julia Roberts as Alma Imhoff; Ayo Edebiri as Maggie Resnick; Andrew Garfield as Hank Gibson; Michael Stuhlbarg as Frederik Mendelssohn; Chloë Sevigny as Dr. Kim Sayers; Thaddea Graham as Katie; Will Price as Arthur; Christine Dye as Patricia
- **Runtime:** 2h 19m
- **Certificate (MPA):** R
- **Release (the US):** 17 October 2025
- **Genres:** Drama
- **Budget:** $70 million
- **Box office:** $9 million
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIIWuJrSI_g

## Where to watch in the US

- Amazon Prime Video: streaming, uhd

*Checked 2026-09-10.*

Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IS, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, TH, TR, UA, US, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Tár* (2022), Fi1m 84: The difficult woman at the podium, and a film that stays with her. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/tar.md)
- *Oleanna* (1994): Mamet’s two-hander on a student, a professor and an accusation, argued to the bone.
- *The Teachers' Lounge* (2023): A German school, a small theft, and a staffroom that turns on one teacher.
- *Anatomy of a Fall* (2023), Fi1m 86: Sandra Hüller on trial, with the truth kept just out of the courtroom. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/anatomy-of-a-fall.md)
- *I Am Love* (2009), Fi1m 81: Guadagnino when he trusted a dinner table and a woman’s face to carry everything. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/i-am-love.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/after-the-hunt