Gen X icon Julia Roberts has to reckon with Gen Z standards around sex and safety in the provocatove trailer for After the Hunt, the latest film from filmmaker Luca Guadagnino.

The trailer spells out its ambition to explore different generations’ complicated views around #MeToo in an opening scene in which millennial actor Andrew Garfield’s character, Frederick, confronts the younger Maggie, played by Gen Z star Ayo Edebiri.

“All your generation you’re just scared of saying the wrong thing,” he complains. “When did offending someone become the preeminent cardinal sin?”

Also Read: Luca Guadagnino: Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker

“Maybe it’s around the same time your generation started making sweeping generalizations about ours?” she responds.

But the cocktail party chatter goes down a darker corridor when Edebiri’s character goes to the mentor, Alma, played by Julia Roberts. It quickly becomes apparent that Alma doesn’t take Maggie’s accusation as seriously as Maggie believes she should, and things escalate.

Then Frederick comes forward with a familiar defense — a claim that Maggie is just weaponizing an accusation of misconduct to get what she wants.

“I caught Maggie cheating,” he tells Alma. “I told her I suspected she plagiarized. And then the next day — utter fabrication.”

We also learn that Anna has secrets of her own.

At one point, one of Alma’s colleagues, played by another Gen X icon, Chloe Sevigngy, makes a startling admission that may sound familiar to Gen Xers and Baby Boomers who endured harassment and worse prior to the #MeToo movement:

“I believe her. But whatever happened to stuffing everything down like the rest of us?”

More After the Hunt Details

It’s a blunt, provocative setup, one to which audiences will no doubt bring their own pre-existing notions. The film seems very much in line with the prolific Guadagnino’s string of other provocative films, including Call Me By Your Name and Challengers.

The film’s title also feels like a dare — does the hunt refer to a predator’s hunt for victims? Or is it a reference the claims by some people snared by #MeToo that they were caught in a witch hunt?

The trailer, notably, does not seem to take a side.

The film was shot by cinematographer Malik Hassan Sayeed, who used 35mm film and is returning to feature films after 25 years. He is known for films including films such as Spike Lee’s Clockers (1995) and He Got Game (1998). The score is from the ever-reliable Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

The film, written by Nora Garrett, arrives in theaters in New York and Los Angeles October 10 and expands October 17 from Amazon MGM Studios.

Main image: Julia Roberts in After the Hunt. Amazon MGM Studios.