Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt has debuted at the Venice Film Festival, and the reaction from critics in attendance makes it seem as though this might be the first major misfire of the awards season. Guadagnino’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed Challengers and Queer, After the Hunt features an all-star cast that includes Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Chloë Sevigny. Pitched as a gripping drama about a professor (Roberts) dealing with her own secretive past after one of her colleagues (Garfield) is faced with serious accusations of misconduct, the picture debuted out of competition at Venice before its October 2025 release date.
So far, critics are less than impressed with Guadagnino’s latest: As of this writing, After the Hunt sits at a 43% Rotten rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 14 reviews. The number will certainly fluctuate as only a small select group of critics have seen it, and the film is still over a month away from its theatrical release. Yet the outlook is grim, as it’s Guadagnino’s lowest-rated directorial effort on the review aggregator — a dubious distinction previously held by his 2018 remake of Suspiria, which still has a Fresh rating of 65%.
What Are Critics Saying About ‘After the Hunt’
It appears the biggest issue among critics with After the Hunt is the story itself, as most reviews cast the performances in a positive light. Unfortunately, it all seems to be let down by a script that tries too hard to be topical. Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman wrote, “After the Hunt has been made with a fair amount of craft and intrigue, but it’s also a weirdly muddled experience — a tale that’s tense and compelling at times, but dotted with contrivances and too many vague unanswered questions.”
David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter was far more critical, comparing the film negatively to Guadagino’s prior films and adding, “It seems almost implausible that the gifted filmmaker who just gave us the sizzling buoyancy of Challengers and the heady intoxication of Queer could deliver something so dour and airless.”
The news isn’t all bad. Kevin Maher of The Times (UK) gave the movie a 5/5 rating and boldly said, “This will be, no question, Roberts’s fifth Oscar nomination, and likely second win.” Roberts does appear to emerge unscathed, as even Radio Times‘ James Mottram in his 2/5 review noted, “With a whiny score by the usually on-point Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, at least it has Julia Roberts in full swing.” While Roberts might be able to take comfort from these pull quotes, After the Hunt’s overall awards season chances have now been called into question.
With an October release date, a prestigious cast, a critically acclaimed director, and a premiere at a top film festival, Amazon MGM has been positioning After the Hunt as their big Oscars play. Still, even if those plans fail to pan out, hope remains that the all-star cast can drive audiences out to theaters and help the picture become a box office hit among adult audiences when it opens in limited release on October 10 before expanding nationwide on October 17, 2025.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
