After The Hunt

Trigger warning: movie discusses assault

Set in a pre-#MeToo time, on a Yale campus, a renowned college professor is told by a student that her colleague assaulted her. Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts) is the professor, Sydney from The Bear (Ayo Edebiri) is the student, and Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) is the colleague. The star-studded cast doesn’t end there, with Michael Stuhlbarg playing Roberts’s husband and Chloë Sevigny her other colleague. Directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, Challengers, and Queer), this is a tense movie. You follow Roberts as she navigates and becomes unglued as she struggles with how to navigate the situation while holding her own problems in. It’s a pretty slow movie; after the fast-paced Challengers, I was curious as to why it was almost like a play. The tagline of the movie is “Not everything is supposed to make you comfortable,” which leads me to believe that you’re supposed to be on edge. The acting is superb, and each character has a complexity to them that’s spoken and unspoken. I’m not sure it will be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you’re looking for a serious and thought-provoking flick, this is a good one.

Rating: 4/5