After The Hunt

Directed by Luca Guadagnino, After The Hunt follows Julia Roberts’ Alma as she’s caught in the middle of a scandal after a student (Ayo Edebiri’s Maggie) accuses her professor (Andrew Garfield’s Hank) of assault. It’s promising subject matter that’s squandered from the word go by Guadagnino, as the filmmaker, armed with Nora Garrett’s screenplay, kicks the proceedings off with an intolerable sequence that instantly establishes a pompous, obnoxious atmosphere – with the arms-length vibe compounded by Guadagnino’s perpetually ostentatious (and flat-out infuriating) visual choices and a grating, distracting score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. And while Guadagnino has admittedly elicited strong work from many of his performers, with the exception being a wildly out-of-her-depth Edebiri, After The Hunt‘s proliferation of unappealing, incompetent elements renders its few positive attributes moot and paves the way for an interminable, hopelessly unsatisfying midsection and second half – with the end result a seriously (and aggressively) misbegotten endeavor that couldn’t possibly be less interesting (or more maddening).

no stars out of ****