After the Hunt (2025)
Danger Warning! Danger Warning! Danger Warning! Danger Warning! Danger Warning!
Do. Not. Waste. Your. Precious. Time. Watching. This. Film.
Yes, what you've read or heard is true enough. Julia Roberts gives an awards-worthy performance here. She's superb.
Is it worth suffering through this obtuse, pretentious, piece of arthouse, culture vulture crap?
Is it worth enduring 2 hours and 40 minutes of excruciating, mind numbing, butt numbing cinematic excrement, accompanied by what has to be the most idiotic, annoying 'music' accompaniment ever grafted on to a movie that wasn't worth sitting through to begin with?
We did it so you don't have to. No need to thank us, it's part of our job.....which in this case, was the same as the guy who shovels out the elephant enclosure at the zoo.
Pardon us if we skim through the synopsis, because just recalling this film may trigger the killer migraine we got from watching it.
We're on the Yale campus, deep into the Days Of Our Lives of the Philosophy department. Top prof Alma (Roberts) is hoping for tenure as his her colleague and best friend Hank (Andrew Garfield). Alma's overseeing the dissertation of PhD. candidate Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), the daughter of the University's biggest deep pockets donors.
Then things go awry. Maggie claims Hank raped her, which Hank vehemently denies. Alma, who's constantly stricken with bouts of intense stomach pain, is forced to walk a wobbly tightrope between her longtime friend and his accuser, the girl she's mentoring. (Not to mention suppressing a traumatic episode from her own past.....)
Don't make the mistake of thinking that sounds like a fascinating premise for a powerful gut punch of a drama. The wildly overrated director Luca Guadagnino does everything in his power to slow every scene down to a crawl, sometimes leaving the camera to simply stare at the silent actors for an eternity.
And let's not forget to bestow our Hall of Shame award on the so-called 'composers' of the 'score', Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Oh Sweet Heavens do we hate these guys with their atonal moaning and warblings and God only knows what-all.
This destructive duo do everything in their power to interrupt scenes with one lamebrained, foul idea after another......ticking clocks, chords repeated endlessly, and their usual wallpaper of random noise. What's truly funny about this.....we began to think that maybe these musical posers hate the film even more than we do......
We'll stop now, because we'd rather spend time cleaning out our cats' litter box and taking out the recycling bin than spend one more second discussing this worthless abomination.
1 star (*) for Julia Roberts. She might very well take home an Oscar for his performance but experiencing it comes at way too high a cost.
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