This year is like a fire sale for Stephen King fans when it comes to adaptations of his work. Between film and TV, his name keeps popping up. Like the release earlier this year of Oz Perkins’s The Monkey, The Institute on MGM+, The Long Walk, which comes out this month, It: Welcome to Derry, and Edgar Wright’s remake of The Running Man starring Glen Powell. It’s not surprising that Hollywood can adapt so much of his material, considering King has written over half of the books that exist, but what is surprising is the adaptation of his that got overlooked by audiences (which is unfortunate because it’s probably the best), and that’s The Life of Chuck.
Did you see it? Exactly. Adapted from the novella of the same name in King’s 2020 book, If It Bleeds, the story unfolds in reverse chronological order, following the life of…well, you know. It was adapted by horror mastermind Mike Flanagan, but despite what it would have you believe based on the writer/director of the film and the author of the source material, it’s not a horror story. It’s a thought-provoking character piece on the life of an ordinary man, and the thesis of the story can be summed up as: You’re alive…how great is that!
Flanagan adapting this story isn’t that much of a left turn, as many of his fans will attest; his strongest attribute as a filmmaker is his character work. Most of his best horror projects, you could take away the horror element and you would still have a compelling story because the characters are so fleshed out and likable (or deliberately horrible). If you want a pleasant experience, watch Midnight Mass up until the third episode, and when the montage with the Neil Diamond song ends, turn it off and assume all the characters live long and happy lives (TLDW: They don’t).
I’ll try to stay vague and avoid spoilers, considering the film works best if you go into it mostly cold. It would also defeat the purpose of hyping you up to watch it if I gave away everything, but there are weirder things to be found on the internet. The Life of Chuck is one of those movies that’s hard not to just say everything is great, and that you should watch it, but at the same time, I have a hard time coming up with anything that took me out of it.
It’s probably Flanagan’s most accessible film. I know horror films aren’t for everyone, but his style of emphasizing character and really great dialogue carries over seamlessly to a story that’s very romantic about life, but not necessarily about love.
I mentioned earlier that one of the interesting aspects of the story is that it’s told in reverse chronological order. When I first heard about it, it sounded like a fun gimmick, but at the same time, I had in the back of my mind that it could run the risk of being just that: a gimmick.
However, as the film progresses, it becomes one of the coolest aspects of the movie. As it starts—and this isn’t really a spoiler since it’s the entire first chunk of the movie—the film is like a quasi-apocalyptic story from the point of view of Marty played by the great Chiwetel Ejiofor.
That first chapter of the movie would work on its own as a really great short film or inclusion in an anthology, because it very methodically shows everything just slowly crumbling, but in a way that feels realistic. It’s like everyone knows what’s going on, and they’re slowly starting to accept it. But it’s not mass chaos from the perspective of Marty. You just see the people around him starting to give up and stop caring. It’s less a sense of anarchy, so much as it’s a sense of hopelessness and acceptance of impending doom, and it just feels sad.
This is a Mike Flanagan story, so you know someone monologues about it, so he gives the responsibilities to Matthew Lillard.
The man appears in exactly one scene in the movie, never shows up again, but you know why he’s in the trailers and has top billing on the teaser poster? Because it’s probably the best scene in the film, and he’s Matthew Lillard, and he makes everything better. Seriously, he was the best part of What Love Is, which, on the cosmic scale of accomplishments, isn’t a high bar, but he’s responsible for the only scene in that movie that anyone remembers (sans “The 11th Man Theory”) because it and he are genuinely great.
His entire scene is just conveying to the audience every single thing that has gone wrong, and the general malaise that everyone feels about the knowledge that they’re all going to die soon and there’s nothing they can do about it and all they can really do is wait for it to happen... isn't this supposed to be a “life-affirming” story? Where's that "Pure shot of feel good," you promised on the critic quote of the poster, Screen Rex?
That’s what’s great about it being told in reverse. The first chapter gets super dark (including possibly the scariest moment in any Mike Flanagan project), and it ends in such a hopeless and unsettling way that it has you wondering how it’s going to bounce back from that. How do you care about anything that happens when you know how it’s going to end?
Then it goes into the second chapter, and it tells you exactly the time frame of when the ending happens in relation to that exact moment, and the question doesn’t go away, but you have a better context of what's happening.
Then Tom Hiddleston dances with Annalise Basso, and it's delightful and probably the best scene of any movie this year (you can quote me on that). But at the end of the chapter, it reminds you again how the story ends and exactly how it happens, and the severity of why it happens, and at that point, you wonder again: I thought this movie was supposed to be hopeful and positive. You go through the entire film with that hanging over your head, and it makes everything feel just a little bit sadder than it would be otherwise, and then it gets to literally the last minute of the movie and suddenly it’s like—OH! I get it!
It completely recontextualizes the entire story, culminating in an incredibly uplifting ending. Again, no spoilers, but I will say that the song that closes the movie out is excellent and somehow perfectly conveys the entire tone of the movie. Ironically, it’s a Stephen King story, and his stories are often criticized for their endings (according to the running joke of James McAvoy’s character in IT: Chapter 2), but this movie’s ending elevates it from an already good film to a fantastic one.
Besides that, as I said earlier, the film might be Flanagan’s most accessible and efficient movie. The film is under two hours long, and there is zero fat to the story. It’s not like it’s a long-winded grand-scale epic that follows this character’s entire life.
Then again, Big Fish did that just fine in exactly two hours, so I guess that can still be done within a reasonable runtime. Even so, it tackles the essential parts that are relevant to what makes up the character as a human being, and mentions everything else in passing or doesn’t bring it up at all because it doesn’t matter.
That’s the one thing I could imagine would disappoint people who might be going into this to see Tom Hiddleston, is that it’s called The Life of CHUCK, but the version of Chuck that people are probably most excited to see (meaning Hiddleston) is barely in it. But it doesn’t even really matter. The movie makes it clear that, besides dancing, he’s not that unique or special. He’s just a guy, and that’s okay.
This film is like the anti-Forrest Gump. It’s not about how he affects so many people; it’s about how so many people affected him whether he knows it or not.
On the topic of Robert Zemeckis films, what’s incredible about this movie is the sheer attention to detail about everything that happens in the movie. It’s fitting that the film has a school dance that’s Back to the Future-themed, because much like Back to the Future, everything comes back into play at some point in the movie.
It’s like it’s an Edgar Wright movie that meticulously edited out all of the jokes, because every piece of dialogue, every throwaway line, every mundane detail, and every actor that showed up in the first (or technically third) act comes back into play at some point in the remaining two-thirds of the movie.
The film warrants multiple viewings because some of the callbacks are very out in the open and are intended to make you do the Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme at the screen when you catch them, but most of them are insanely subtle. Karen Gillan (who’s awesome in this, by the way) at one point talks on the phone with an anachronistic-looking landline, and I remember thinking, “I would bet an unsubstantiated amount of money that someone else uses that phone later on.” That’s a direct transcript of my thoughts—but anyway, it does! It shows up again! It has no relevance to the plot, and you wouldn’t even notice if you weren’t looking for it, but they made the effort, and the detail made me laugh.
I don’t have much more to add, besides the film looks beautiful, everyone’s great in it—Nick Offerman narrates the film and it’s as remarkably charming as you’d expect—and the film’s overly optimistic outlook that in another filmmaker’s hands could come across as corny and saccharine ends up feeling very sweet and sincere. It would definitely make for a good movie to watch if you’re feeling sad and need to be reminded how great life can be (everyone has bad days).
The Life of Chuck is also possibly Flanagan’s best adaptation of a Stephen King story, which is saying a lot considering Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep are both fantastic movies, and it might be his best film in general, but that’s just my opinion.
If you missed it in the theater, it’s available to rent right now, or you can be a proper physical media supporter and buy the Blu-ray when it comes out on Tuesday, Sept. 30. Either way, you should check it out.