After the Hunt: Academia’s Classiest Nervous Breakdown
- Niels Gys
- Nov 20
- 3 min read
TL;DR
Watching this film feels like witnessing a genteel academic politely commit arson with her reputation.
A refined psychological thriller where good intentions die, lies multiply, and you realise academia is ten times more stressful than crime.
Before we dive in, if After the Hunt already has you craving more academic chaos, you can grab it legally (and suspiciously fast) on Amazon:
Criminal Fantasy Fulfillment
Look, After the Hunt isn’t a crime story in the sense of “guns, bags of cash, and someone yelling LET’S MOVE.”
No. This is a more elegant sort of crime, the kind committed in polite sentences, Excel spreadsheets, and carefully worded emails that absolutely ruin someone’s life.
It’s academic warfare.Not physical violence, emotional accounting fraud.
And honestly?It’s glorious.
You get to root for people who smile like saints but behave like the kind of people who’d sell your kidney if it improved their career prospects by 0.3%. Every scene feels like someone’s about to get publicly executed via faculty meeting.
Delicious.
Plot & Pacing
The film unravels slowly — the way a Christmas sweater unravels when your cat decides the sleeve is its mortal enemy.
Nothing explodes.
No car chases.
Just a constant awareness that someone, somewhere, is lying through their very expensive teeth.
The pacing is pure psychological slow-cook:
you’re simmering, they’re simmering, the whole bloody university is simmering, and you can’t look away because it’s genuinely gripping to watch smart people panic so beautifully.
Characters & Performances
Julia Roberts
She plays the professor with the sort of icy composure that suggests she has never once forgotten a grudge in her entire life. She carries the film with a confidence usually reserved for people who own a private vineyard.
Every look says:“I know what you did. And also, I’m right.”
Ayo Edebiri
You don’t catch her acting, you detect her, like a quiet storm forming in the corner of the room while everyone else pretends the sky isn’t turning black.
A masterclass in subtle, unnerving precision.
Andrew Garfield
Perfectly cast as that colleague who always seems slightly guilty, even when he’s literally holding nothing but a coffee mug.He’s the human equivalent of a misplaced USB stick: harmless but suspicious.
The tension between the three is so sharp you could slice cheese with it.
Dialogue & Writing
The script is beautifully venomous.
Not loud.
Not preachy.
Just… poisonous.
Every line feels like it has a twin hidden behind it with a knife. It’s the kind of dialogue where people are smiling warmly while their words slowly peel the wallpaper off the room.
Not Tarantino, no.
Think fewer pop culture tangents, more elegant intellectual knife fights.
World & Atmosphere
Guadagnino turns the campus into a strangely oppressive labyrinth of pristine hallways, awkward silences, and unspoken hierarchies.
The atmosphere is so thick with tension you could bottle it and sell it as artisanal anxiety.
It’s academia, yes — but the kind of academia where everyone looks slightly afraid of each other.
Which, in fairness, is probably accurate.
Direction & Style
Everything is filmed with surgical precision. The camera doesn’t move so much as it lurks, as though it’s waiting patiently for someone to say something catastrophic so it can catch the fallout in 4K.
It’s restrained, elegant, and quietly vicious.
Soundtrack & Mood
Minimal, unsettling, and perfectly in sync with the characters slowly circling each other like professionally trained predators.
Not the kind of soundtrack you listen to casually.
This one asks questions.
Creepy ones.
Morality & Madness
This is a film where “morality” is something characters reference, not something they practice.
Nobody is good.
Everybody is flawed.
And by the end you’ll realise you’ve spent two hours rooting for people who desperately need a therapist, a vacation, or possibly both simultaneously.
It’s messy, human, and fascinating.
Rewatchability / Bingeworthiness
If you enjoy slow-burning psychological drama, it’s rewatchable. If you only watch movies that include at least one explosion, you will struggle.
But for anyone who enjoys watching society’s most highly educated individuals emotionally self-destruct, this might become comfort cinema.
FAQ — Sarcastic & SEO-friendly
Is After the Hunt worth watching? Yes, if you enjoy brilliant actors ripping each other apart with politeness.
Is it slow? Beautifully. Deliberately. Like a posh scandal brewing in a teapot.
Is Julia Roberts actually that good? Yes. She walks into the film like she owns the university and possibly the continent.
Does the movie have twists? It has morally complicated knots more than twists. Very fun knots.
Will I like it if I hate academia? Oh absolutely. It’s basically revenge cinema for everyone who’s ever suffered through higher education.
If you loved After the Hunt’s polite psychological destruction, here’s more elegant misery you can legally buy:
Comments