After contributing to five television Netflix series, Mike Flanagan returns to the big screen with his second adaptation of a Stephen King title in The Life of Chuck, this time based on the novella of the same name published in the If It Bleeds collection. One could even say it’s part of a broader – yet coincidental – corpus of films released this year related to death and grief, though it touches upon something that no filmmaker had tapped into before Flanagan visualizes it so strikingly during the movie’s devastating final scene.
The final scene is the one leading up to the movie’s second act, as Flanagan presents Charles “Chuck” Krantz’s (played by Tom Hiddleston, Jacob Tremblay, Benjamin Pajak, and Cody Flanagan) story in reverse chronological order, just like King’s text, starting with Act 3 and finishing with Act 1. Hiddleston is barely in the movie as Chuck, and the bulk of his screen time occurs in Act 2, where he becomes so entranced by a drummer’s (Taylor Gordon AKA The Pocket Queen) patterns that he breaks out into dance, giving Flanagan a bit of an excuse to flex his filmmaking muscles in ways that he never did before.
The sequence itself is one of the best Flanagan has ever crafted for the big screen, staging an intricate, rhythmically exciting dance choreography and with a layer of added tragedy as Chuck begins to notice signs of the illness that will ultimately leave him riddled in a hospital bed, awaiting the end of his world. Once the audience begins to realize this, it won’t be long before full body chills reach down your spine and make your jaw drop, as you realize what it means to live in a world that not only is destined to collapse itself, but with you awaiting your ultimate trip and leaving it without a trace.
The film begins with Chuck’s death, and ends with him realizing why his life should still be worth living, even if he knows his finite nature, just like everyone else’s. But what was most interesting to me wasn’t necessarily the character’s story, although it makes up the bulk of the second and first acts. What first drew me were the metaphysical discussions professor Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor) engages with his ex-wife, Felicia Gordon (Karen Gillan), as the world is slowly coming to an end – entire cities destroyed by natural disasters exacerbated through climate change, the internet and power completely cut off – and the only thing on their television is an ad thanking Chuck for his 39 years of service.
"39 Great Years! Thanks, Chuck!"
Who is ‘Chuck’? And why is he everywhere? Why is his death suddenly linked to the collapse of planets and stars in the galaxies, while Marty and Felicia can’t make sense of what’s happening and only have a few seconds to say they love each other before the planet is destroyed? These are questions that Flanagan introduces in Act 3, and smartly answers by the time we get to Act 1 and see that this world, as surreal as it is and is the victim of many inexplicable phenomena, may not be as normal as it seems.
That’s about as far as I’ll go in describing this often moving and cathartic story, which confronts viewers with the spectre of their own mortality in ways they never saw coming. Yet, when watching the melancholic third act respond to the jubilant dance sequence, which recalls the intricate choreographies of Charles Vidor’s Cover Girl, an impactful movie from Chuck’s childhood, everything makes sense. We like to “live in the moment” and enjoy “the pleasures of life,” while never once thinking about where we’ll eventually end up. However, the middle of such an exuberant musical number, Chuck starts to feel unwell and brushes it off, as if the signs of his mortality can be ignored, when they shouldn’t.
That’s where the movie hit me much deeper than I had anticipated, and where Flanagan’s thematically driven story starts to open up, even before Chuck’s childhood, where we meet a younger version of a character with much more ambitious prospects than the one presented by Hiddleston, where he remembers flashes of his past, which was a more happy life, but is now stuck in a perpetual rot of mediocrity that he will sadly never get out of. It makes the final revelation all the more tragic, for the character, and for the audience, who realize that, no matter how “wonderful” they may be, and how they “contain multitudes,” their life will always result in the same conclusion as everyone else.
This could definitely be a nihilistic, pessimistic viewpoint of the world, and it certainly seems so when Flanagan opens the movie, presenting an almost inhabitable planet—and galaxy—slowly destroying itself. But as he flashes back to the past, we begin to realize the beauty of Chuck’s life. The time he spent with his grandparents (played by Mia Sara and Mark Hamill) and the lessons he learned from the advice they imparted to him, which still hold true to him as he has grown older, and, unfortunately, fell ill. Chuck also learned to dance and realized how joyful life can be when we move and feel as if nothing can stop us, not even death itself.
The Life of Chuck Gives Life-Affirming Texture to Stephen King's Source Material
All of these moments, both set in the past and present, are interconnected through Nick Offerman’s voiceover narration, as he explains to us how Chuck’s life meant for his world, and the larger universe at play. While a bit too present, Flanagan knows when to let the actors’ emotions speak for themselves, particularly in scenes where Chuck finally realizes what his life means, and wants to defy the odds in ways his parents—and grandparents—couldn’t. Because we know how his story ends from the minute the film begins, all of these scenes have an air of pure desolation, equally brought by the star-studded cast’s note-perfect acting, and the audience knowing what comes next.
Of course, it may not have been as deeply moving without each actor giving their A-game, whether a big or small part. There isn’t a single bad performance in Flanagan’s ensemble, either through Ejiofor’s philosophical portrayal of a teacher attempting to find purpose in a decaying world, or in Hamill’s grandfather explaining to Chuck the values of a stable, mathematically-precise life. Each actor brings a pertinent, emotionally-charged dimension to this life-affirming, important story, whose message is far more potent as the world becomes more complicated and dangerous, and the future is far more uncertain for all of us than just a few decades ago.
It’s as far removed as possible from anything Flanagan has previously done in both film and television, but one can notice his sensibilities at every turn, notably how he fills each frame with as much tangible atmosphere as possible, either through its intricate soundscapes, deliberate blocking with Eben Bolter’s staggering cinematography, and even with a minimalist, but impactful score from The Newton Brothers. Above all else, though, this is a profoundly human film, as each Flanagan title has always been. Focus on the characters, first and foremost, to draw audiences in, and flip expectations once they get a bit too comfortable.
When The Life of Chuck cuts to black at the thirty-minute mark and transitions from Act 3 to Act 2, what comes after can only be described as pure movie magic. But nothing, and I mean nothing, can prepare you for its final scene, and final lines, as one becomes urgently encouraged to live their lives as much as they can before the spectre of death, which has been haunting us ever since we were born, decides it’s time to show its face and tell us that it’s all over…
Life of Chuck opens in theaters on June 13, 2025