‘After the Hunt’ is a fascinating, and at times caustic, dissection of how a sexual abuse allegation within a university setting exposes fault lines around honesty, integrity, and the slipperiness of truth. Julia Roberts delivers one of her most complex performances as Alma, a Professor specializing in virtue ethics whose professional principles are put to the test when the moral questions she teaches suddenly collide with revelations from her own past.

When a student, Maggie, accuses Alma’s close friend and colleague Hank (Andrew Garfield) of sexual assault, Alma is drawn into a web of conflicting loyalties and uncomfortable parallels. Maggie, it transpires, knows of a similar scandal that may have involved Alma decades earlier – and has even begun to dress like her, imitate her, and quote her work. Is this admiration, manipulation, or something more sinister? The deeper the film goes, the less certain we become about who to believe.

There’s a clear ‘All About Eve’ quality to the relationship between Alma and Maggie – the young protégé who may be attempting to replace her mentor, no matter how devious the path. Yet what ‘After the Hunt’ captures so well is the way contamination spreads: how a single allegation, regardless of its truth, can infect reputations, friendships, and even the idea of virtue itself.

The film’s structure and tone recall ‘Tár’ and ‘Anatomy of a Fall’ – chilly, cerebral works that refuse to divide the world into heroes and villains. Like those films, ‘After the Hunt’ thrives in ambiguity. Its deliberately uncomfortable pacing mirrors the moral murk it depicts. The black-and-white typeface of its chapter headings even evokes Woody Allen titles, while its dialogue references everyone from Freud to Heidegger, pointing to the hypocrisy of idolizing flawed thinkers while condemning contemporary counterparts.

In the end, this isn’t a courtroom drama but a philosophical one – a meditation on virtue signalling, trauma, and the impossibility of moral clarity. ‘After the Hunt’ suggests that faith in one’s own righteousness can be as dangerous as guilt itself. Those seeking tidy answers will leave frustrated, but those open to complexity will find it hauntingly resonant. It’s a film that lingers not because it resolves the debate, but because it refuses to.