My first two Luca Guadagnino experiences—Call Me By Your Name and Challengers—were both knockouts, so I came to expect greatness from Guadagnino, only to be let down last year by Queer. Like Ariana Grande in the late 2010s, Guadagnino seems to be prioritizing quantity over quality recently, and that continued with After the Hunt.

I was definitely drawn in by the director’s pedigree and the stacked primary cast (especially Ayo Edebiri and Andrew Garfield), and they each delivered, but the framework in which they had to operate was frustratingly messy. The main story of a sexual assault case in a higher education setting was potentially interesting, but Guadagnino didn’t capitalize, feeling like he was simultaneously saying too much and nothing at all about the modern perspective on sexual assault. I did think the focus on the generational divide in how SA is treated was interesting, but that was it.

Each main performance also had its strong moments—Andrew Garfield was the most animated and memorable—and Guadagnino made sure to not glorify any person or generation’s ideas, though I thought the characters were unreasonably against Michael Stuhlbarg’s character. He didn’t ever seem like an asshole to me, but clearly some of his actions rubbed people the wrong way. He felt like the only character that wasn’t moderately unlikeable (or more).

Where I felt After the Hunt suffered the most was in its pedestrian scenes and lack on engaging plot points. I was quite bored during the first half of this movie, and though the emotions leveled up in the last half hour, the film had mostly lost me by that point. After the Hunt was a real watch-checker, unfortunately, though not the worst Guadagnino film I’ve seen by a lot.

Queer was one of my least favorite films of 2024, and while it’s an improvement that After the Hunt will sit somewhere in the middle of my 2025 list, I expect a lot more from Guadagnino. Also, this is small, but what in the world was that score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross? Either Guadagnino didn’t use them the right way or they wrote this in their sleep. One of their weakest scores, unfortunately, and disappointing considering most of their work is top-tier. I digress.