After The Hunt will finally have its wide release this weekend, and the film could be en route to a strong awards campaign in the coming months. While reviews of After the Hunt have generally been mixed, critics have heavily praised the lead performances from Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri, and Julia Roberts.

Luca Guadagnino’s latest thriller asks plenty of important questions about consent, autonomy, and workplace power dynamics that feel increasingly relevant in today’s world. This important commentary is present right until After the Hunt’s impactful ending, which arguably leaves the audience with even more questions than answers.

Although many criticisms have been leveled against Guadagnino’s screenplay, most can agree that After The Hunt‘s lead performances are strong enough to keep the project afloat most of the time. This is a very character-driven story, and there’s a huge amount of nuance required from the performances to make this ambiguous narrative stand out.

5

Chloë Sevigny

Chloe Sevigny delivers a strong performance in After the Hunt, but her character is ultimately too distanced from the main narrative to leave much of an impact. She plays Dr. Kim Sayers, the university’s student liaison and a close personal friend of Julia Roberts’ protagonist, Alma.

The main problem with Sevigny’s character is that she has very little in common with the other characters. She exists solely to push a specific subplot forward (Alma’s application for tenure at the university), but doesn’t have much to do with the film’s main storyline of Maggie’s Sєxual ᴀssault and the professional ramifications of it.

Sevigny does an excellent job of highlighting Kim’s hypocrisy and showing how cutthroat the world of academia can be, but this ultimately feels irrelevant in a story that has much more pressing issues at its core. It also doesn’t help that After The Hunt has strongly marketed itself as some kind of distorted love triangle, leaving supporting roles underdeveloped.

As many reviews of After The Hunt have pointed out, this is a very thematic story that’s centered around a particular idea – and everything else ends up feeling secondary. Chloe Sevigny finds herself a victim of this unconventional structure; she does her best with a very flat character, but her role ultimately leaves very little impact on the story.

4

Ayo Edebiri

After The Hunt is a completely different kind of role for Ayo Edebiri. The actress is best known for her comedic work in projects like The Bear, Bottoms, and Abbott Elementary, but Guadagnino’s new film requires a whole different skillset. Instead of sarcastic deliveries and quick-witted jokes, this role calls for something much more serious.

Edebiri plays Maggie in After The Hunt, the troubled student who accuses her teacher of Sєxually ᴀssaulting her after a party. When the adults in her life try to prevent her from spreading this story, she goes to a prolific journalist to make sure the world knows what happened that night.

Truthfully, Edebiri delivers a very strong performance in After the Hunt. It’s deeply layered and filled with nuance, never quite letting the audience into her mind and constantly keeping them at a distance. This is exactly what the character calls for, as we’re supposed to be unsure whether she’s telling the truth about Hank’s ᴀssault or not.

Maggie is an intrinsically frustrating character. She’s (seemingly) been through something very traumatic and shocking, but she’s not supposed to be a sympathetic character – or even likable, really. Edebiri does a good job of capturing the two sides of Maggie’s story, but her performance ultimately doesn’t feel as charged or pᴀssionate as those around her.

3

Andrew Garfield

Andrew Garfield has been in some excellent movies throughout his career, and while After the Hunt may not be as critically acclaimed as his previous work, the caliber of acting on display is no worse. Perhaps what’s most impressive about Garfield’s performance in this chilling drama is how subtly and discreetly he changes throughout the film, constantly unlocking new layers.

Garfield plays Hank in After the Hunt, one of the university’s most respected professors and the best friend of Roberts’ protagonist, Alma. He’s an incredibly gifted teacher, but he’s also somebody who’s not used to people shutting down his flirtatious behavior – so his life turns upside-down when Maggie accuses him of Sєxually ᴀssaulting her.

After the Hunt completely revolves around Garfield’s performance, even though he’s not the film’s main character. The central mystery of the story (at least on the surface) is whether there’s any truth behind Maggie’s claims of Sєxual ᴀssault, and Garfield has to strike the perfect balance of guilt and innocence to make this narrative compelling.

Garfield does an excellent job of deconstructing the male ego and showing how pride can easily break down into rage when viewed through the wrong lens. His regression from an upper-class, refined professor into a man of anger and enтιтlement is brilliant, and really helps to unlock After the Hunt‘s key themes.

2

Michael Stuhlbarg

Michael Stuhlbarg’s role in After The Hunt may only be a supporting one, but he runs away with every scene he appears in. It’s a very understated performance, and nowhere near as emotional as the three leads, but he’s the stoic glue that holds this entire story together. Without him, After the Hunt‘s commentary on trust and sacrifice wouldn’t be nearly as effective.

Stuhlbarg plays Alma’s husband Frederick in After the Hunt: a prolific psychiatrist and one of the only people to speak out against Alma’s self-absorbed and often narcissistic lifestyle. The film poses some important questions about whether those in a position of privilege can truly empathize with others, and Alma and Frederick occupy opposite ends of the spectrum.

Michael Stuhlbarg always delivers strong performances, and he’s an invaluable addition to After the Hunt‘s cast. His character is the film’s only clear voice of reason, and without him, this whole story would merely be a playground of insufferable characters with nobody to hold them to account for their actions.

At its core, After the Hunt is about the imbalanced power dynamics between men and women, both on a personal and professional scale. This manifests most clearly in the dynamic between Maggie and Hank, but the opposite is also clear in Alma and Frederick’s marriage. Stuhlbarg plays his role with a certain vulnerability that’s nowhere to be found in Hank.

1

Julia Roberts

One of the many reasons After the Hunt has received such harsh reviews is also the reason it’s such a fascinating project: none of the characters are likable in the least. They’re all very complex figures with deep flaws and imperfections, and they breed the same toxic atmosphere that allows this exploitation of power to manifest in the first place.

Julia Roberts’ protagonist Alma is arguably the clearest example of this. She’s a very well-respected professor who’s rumored to be making tenure in the coming months, but she’s also a very exploitative presence who takes advantage of her students for her own pleasure. So when Maggie voices her concerns about Hank, her reaction is entirely selfish.

Roberts captures this leeching aspect of Alma’s personality excellently, presenting her as somebody whom everybody cares about but who cares about nobody more than herself. It allows for some very astute commentary on the #MeToo era, framing the entire social movement as something that doesn’t protect the victims but merely aims to vindicate them.

This is one of Julia Roberts’ best performances in years, and it would be a shame if the actress went unrecognized throughout this year’s awards circuit. The film’s mixed critical reception means it’s unlikely that she’ll find herself nominated at the Oscars, but she certainly deserves some praise for this rich, layered performance.