After the Hunt

Just because it revolves around high-brow intellectuals and erudite academics doesn’t mean After the Hunt should feel like a lecture.

This glimpse into cancel culture and #MeToo gender politics from acclaimed director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name) is a provocative conversation starter. Yet despite a superb cast, it unfortunately resorts to heavy-handed melodrama while lacking subtlety and nuance.

Ambition surpasses execution in a stylish but muddled exploration of tricky thematic territory — power, control, oppression, trust, loyalty, and secrets — that’s too detached from reality to have a deeper impact.

The story is set in the Yale philosophy department, where Alma (Julia Roberts) is a decorated professor on the verge of achieving tenure. Her brightest doctoral student is Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), who Alma invites to her boozy dinner party for friends and colleagues.

A few days later, Maggie confides in Alma that she was sexually assaulted later that night by Hank (Andrew Garfield), a younger faculty member. Alma’s support is less than enthusiastic given her fondness for Hank, which extends beyond mere friendship.

As word spreads around the department and the campus, Maggie — feeling marginalized as a queer Black woman — pushes for justice while Alma distances herself. Meanwhile, Alma’s psychiatrist husband (Michael Stuhlbarg) curiously reacts with passive-aggressive hostility.

“If you press charges, you will become radioactive,” Alma reasons. “Higher education is run by white men and you need white men to hire you.” But does her advice come with an ulterior motive?

Layering her character’s fiery sophistication with vulnerability, Roberts wonderfully conveys the weight of responsibility as Alma struggles to keep her world from crumbling.

Although too often relegated to the sidelines, Maggie becomes the film’s emotional anchor amid all the insufferably pompous blowhards around her. Edebiri (Opus) generates sympathy through determination, while making Maggie’s fragility relatable.

As she exposes hidden agendas and challenges moral compasses, rookie screenwriter Nora Garrett crafts some crackling exchanges for Alma, including Maggie’s initial accusation and Hank’s impassioned denial.

Guadagnino hints at a Hitchcockian vibe that the script can’t match while trying to tighten its grip in the final act, when you wait for the simmering tension to reach a full boil and fear for the unjust worst.

However, the inevitable twists yield more confusion than surprise. After the Hunt strives to be more than just an earnest empowerment saga, but winds up frustrating in the wrong ways.

Rated R, 139 minutes.