This is not a conventional review – because After the Hunt itself resists conventional judgment. Reviewing this film full of “artsy” star cast feels like a mousetrap. I’m not sure how to write about it. Every single cinematic technique and dialogue line used in this film stands on a thin line between being extremely poignant and extremely cliché.

The camerawork seems great but at the end that’s not convincing either. With intertangled character developments, drama, and hard-to-miss close-ups which pretend to add subtlety – and sometimes they do until it gets too obvious – and bring the audience’s attention onto the subconscious movements and details that are supposed to be so saying – details that are saying of the storyline and the characters but that we often miss in real life. But the film is not about details – everything there is loud and clear – so why use such cinematography? For stylization? For suspense? If there’s a gun on the wall at the beginning of the story – it has to fire at some point – we all know this rule. And, it concerns not only the elements of the story but also the techniques it is told by – and this technique is cheap because it’s not fully connected to the plot.

I am even scared of summarizing this film because of how much it seems to mimic reality, so writing about this film in any shape or form would feel like reviewing the multiple layers of such reality instead. And, I’m not sure I’m brave enough for that.

Film reviews are always ultimately subjective. Although I try to review a film by 2 criteria – how much I think it “objectively” corresponds to “global” film standards – the plot, the cinematography and mise-en-scene, the character development, acting, and everything in a word – AND how much I specifically like the film subjectively.

Yet HERE, every sentence I voice about this film in my head sounds wrong if said out loud – politically and socially – and that is exactly the situation the characters of the film are in. Nonetheless, I don’t know if it makes the film genius or just another clichéd mirroring of contemporary societal issues.

P.S. The acting is amazing here. That’s why I added the half-star after the 5!