Don Reviews "After The Hunt"

Films like Disclosure, Bombshell, Doubt, and Precious have all dealt with the issue of sexual abuse in different arenas. For the most part, they deal with this issue in a raw and straight-forward way, but going into my screening of After the Hunt, I was curious on how director Luca Guadagnino (Suspiria) would handle it when it takes place on the campus of Yale University.

Julia Roberts plays Alma, a professor who is looking to gain tenure and competing for it with her longtime friend Hank (Andrew Garfield).  After a social gathering at her home, one of her brighter students named Maggie (Ayo Edebiri) makes an allegation Hank (Garfield) sexually assaulted her at her home afterwards.  As Alma finds herself caught in the middle, she must find out what the truth is, even if it is at a high cost.

The best part of this film is the acting, with great performances and chemistry among Roberts, Edebiri, Garfield, and Michael Stuhlbarg as Alma’s husband, Frederik.  Roberts and Edebiri shine in this type of intense drama, but my favorite performance was by Stuhlbarg; even though in a supporting role, he added a enjoyable performance that can get serious but also make you laugh.

Besides that, there was NOTHING good about After the Hunt.  This film at two hours and twenty minutes, this is WAY too long, with an hour could have easily been cut out of this film.  It even felt like it was thirty minutes in before any of the plot got moving, using that time for overexplaining characters and possible motivations.

Knowing that we are in the fourth quarter of the year, there is no doubt in my mind that this film is simply awards bait for its two female leads alone, and that makes the rest of it suffer.  In a different way, this film is like Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, which also was way too long and included extra mindless action to show that Tom Cruise does his own stunts

To sum up, I will NEVER watch After the Hunt again, and the only reason I can barely recommend watching, at the lowest form possible, is just for the performances.  In fact, this film might make my end of the year list of worst films.