After the Hunt review
By Joel Humphries · Watched 10.16.25
★★★★ 4 / 5
Spoiler-free review
After the Hunt refuses to assign the audience a morally approved side. Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri inhabit a dispute in which the alleged perpetrator, the person caught between competing loyalties and the larger institution all remain difficult to read, while Luca Guadagnino withholds certainty about what happened. That ambiguity has been mistaken for evasion or an anti-cancel-culture argument, but I found it honest about situations that do not arrive with narrators explaining whom to believe. The outstanding performances make uncertainty active rather than empty. Mixed reviews aside, this is a compelling film precisely because it declines to simplify itself for us.
Full review — contains spoilers
I really enjoyed this. I think it's a good film despite the mixed reviews. Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, and Ayo Edebiri all did outstanding work here.
I think a lot of the negative criticism I’ve seen isn’t actually about the film itself, but about the fact that it refuses to take a side. It doesn’t side with the perpetrator, and it doesn’t fully side with the protagonist who’s caught in the middle either. Guadagnino just lays everything out and lets us sit in the uncertainty. There’s no clear moral compass or narrative push telling you who to root for. You never know what happened for sure.
To me, that ambiguity is the point. These kinds of situations are messy, and the film’s unwillingness to simplify that is what makes it compelling. I think some of the critical pushback comes from the perception that the movie is “anti–cancel culture,” but I read that more as a reflection of the protagonist’s perspective rather than any heavy-handed agenda from Guadagnino.
Anyways, if you've read all of this, I think this is a good film. I think you should watch it.