There is an appeal to a slow-moving train wreck. The anticipation, the suspense, the destruction. You understand the horror of two powerful machines smashing into each other, and yet that same horror compels you to look. Your morbid curiosity keeps your eyes on the tragedy that is about to play out in front of you. So, imagine the annoyance when, just before impact, the camera pans away to a scenic view of someone’s hands as you hear the limp collision of 30-year-old LEGO bricks scraping against each other. After the Hunt is the bricks.

Alma Olsson (Julia Roberts) is a celebrated professor teaching philosophy at Yale. Beloved by her students, faculty, and a doting husband in Fredrik Olsson (Michael Stuhlbarg, playing the best character in the movie), her life is seemingly perfect, as all she has left to achieve is that sweet, academic tenure. So, naturally, she is dropped into an uncomfortable predicament as her longtime colleague, Hank Gibson (Andrew Garfield) is accused of sexually assaulting her promising protégé in philosophy, Maggie Price (Ayo Edebiri). This sets off a chain of events that will question her dedication to ethics, her friends, and to uncomfortable truths.

Indeed, discomfort is the primary theme. There are stark, contrasting shadows, long, awkward pauses, and single shots of multiple rooms in which you are given more information than you need. At the same time, so much is hidden from you by the camera focusing on fidgety hands or claustrophobic first-person views. The color palette and grading have a distinct washed out or greasy look reminiscent of early 2000s music videos. Several shots feel like grungy album covers because they basically are. This film is wonderfully decadent in appearance at times.

The soundtrack, appropriately scored by Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, is tense mix of haunting piano and striking violin chords reminiscent of a horror movie.

The actors all give stellar performances. Garfield goes from a suave, intellectual flirt to a desperate raging mess trying with all his might to save his career. Roberts has a pristinely casual look to her and grows more disheveled as the weight of her situation literally makes her ill. Edebiri is an aloof ball of social avoidance who at times betrays her wounded lamb routine to reveal the manipulative wolf underneath.

The actors, the music, and the cinematography are all performing in the name of discomfort and nailing it. Yet, the script seems afraid of making the audience uncomfortable. Whenever the movie threatens to take an interesting turn, such as revealing Maggie’s penchant for plagiarism, or Hank’s less-than-honest motives, it sidesteps for the sake of ambiguity.

After the Hunt is afraid of the answers to its own questions. You see the trains inching ever closer to each other, but you never see the impact.