Amazon MGM Studios and Luca Guadagnino’s psychological drama-thriller After the Hunt is launching today at the Venice Festival and it’s a timely subject.
Julia Roberts leads the cast as a college professor who finds herself at a personal and professional crossroads when a star student (Ayo Edebiri) levels an accusation against one of her colleagues (Andrew Garfield), and a dark secret from her own past threatens to come into the light. Michael Stulbarg and Chloë Sevigny also star in the film, which touches on themes of cancel culture, the MeToo movement and free speech.
The critics are starting to have their say on the movie and responses so far have been decidedly mixed. Roberts however comes in for consistent praise.
Deadline was among those to laud Roberts and connect with the film: “Though its conversations about tenure can be a chore, its presentation of the modern campus as the Somme — in terms of the battleground for progressive politics — does strike a very timely chord. It’s also Julia Roberts’ best work in a long, long time, a superb feat of casting that genuinely sends shivers and may well bury that old America’s Sweetheart image for good.”
The UK’s Daily Telegraph gives the film five stars out of five, calling it a “devilish cancel culture thriller” and proclaiming that Julia Roberts is “back to her best”.
To read the Times of London’s review you’ll need a subscription but the paper loudly claims: “Julia Roberts will win an Oscar for this MeToo story”.
The Playlist gave the movie a C+ score, noting: “The film’s preoccupations lie not as much with existential questions of morality but with more primitive matters of yearning. As a study of the former, Guadagnino’s drama feels lacking, but if seen as a musing on the latter, it opens up as an imperfect but still fascinating read.”
The Guardian wasn’t a fan, giving the film two stars and calling it a “muddled campus accusation drama”: “Luca Guadagnino’s latest is clenched in its own sense of relevance, as a desire to find complexity in a scandal at Yale becomes a noncommittal jumble of ideas…Guadagnino misfires with this bafflingly overlong, overwrought #MeToo campus accusation drama.”
The Film Stage also dings the movie, calling it “regressive and unimaginative”: “After the Hunt aims to tackle our so-called cancel culture, but wrestling with that weighty topic isn’t the same as meaningfully reckoning with it; if there’s anything genuinely uncomfortable about Guadagnino’s film, it’s not button-pushing issues but the reactionary way it squanders them.”
The South China Morning Post gives the movie 2.5/5 stars, calling it “muddled”: “While Julia Roberts shines in After the Hunt, which explores the chaos of a sexual assault case, the real crux of the story remains unclear.”
Decider also struggled with the film, saying “it might be too smart for its own good”: “The film moves somewhat languidly as it goes through the necessary motions of the preliminary stages of dealing with the allegations. Dialogue between the characters carries an aura of predetermination, as all participants understand the roles they will play in the upcoming hubbub. Add to that a feeling of suffocating claustrophobia from the sparse set design and the chilly color palette, a notable reversal from the usually lush stylings of Guadagnino, and After the Hunt can feel a bit like a gussied-up potboiler.”
Written by screenwriter Nora Garrett, the movie follows in the wake of ever-busy Italian director Guardagnino’s sports romance Challengers, starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, and Queer, starring Daniel Craig.
Producers on After the Hunt are Brian Grazer and Allan Mandelbaum for Imagine Entertainment and Call Me By Your Name Oscar nominee Guadagnino under his Frenesy banner. Garrett also exec produces along with Imagine’s Karen Lunder.
The feature launches October 10.
The post ‘After The Hunt’: What The Critics Are Saying About Luca Guadagnino’s Cancel Culture Thriller Starring Julia Roberts appeared first on Deadline.
