To coin an adage, directing a Stephen King adaptation is like getting a tattoo: it’s difficult to stop at one. The only thing harder to wrap your head around than the number of full-length page-to-screen adaptations inspired by King’s prodigious output — which, depending on how one counts teleplays, long-form series, and derivative works, totals anywhere from the high 50s to more than 100 — is how many filmmakers have signed up for repeat assignments tackling the best-selling author’s novels and short stories. Directors ranging from Tobe Hooper to Frank Darabont to Mick Garris to George A. Romero to Rob Reiner have all taken multiple bites of the apple, but the current leader in the clubhouse is Mike Flanagan. With the release of The Life of Chuck, Flanagan has now directed three feature films (in a row) based on King’s writing, following his adaptations of Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep (he’s also at work on a TV series based on Carrie), and while other filmmakers have used the source material as merely a jumping off point, Flanagan’s adaptations demonstrate the sort of fidelity to the original text that designate him as a true keeper of the flame. In fact, The Life of Chuck even retains large chunks of narration from the 2020 short story that inspired it, read over the on-screen action in an avuncular baritone by the actor Nick Offerman. But while Flanagan’s vision may have brought the film to fruition, it’s hard to argue the authorial voice here belongs to anyone but King.
Whether that’s a positive or not depends entirely on how one views King’s mile-wide sentimental streak. One of the biggest open secrets in literature is that the modern “master of horror” has some pretty mawkish tendencies that unfortunately crop up in his writing, a flaw that many a filmmaker has had to elide in adapting his work to the screen (if you don’t believe me, look up the denouements of the novels The Shining and It). The Life of Chuck finds King in outright heart-on-his-sleeve mode, exploring the bittersweet mysteries of existence itself and the unavoidable journey toward death that begins the moment someone is born, with Flanagan preserving all the “smiling through the tears” wistfulness and folksy predeterminism. The film chronicles the unspectacular, highly transposable life of its title character while also gently reminding us that we (and everyone we’ve ever known and loved) will someday die. And rather than treat the subject as something fraught with dread, the film is instead sanguine about the inevitable, attempting to convey a measure of peaceful resignation. The Life of Chuck isn’t unpleasant exactly, but it is a bit like spending 110 minutes in the greeting card aisle of a pharmacy.
Retaining the unconventional structure of the novella, The Life of Chuck begins at the end — as in, “of the world.” We meet a group of small-town American residents, gradually then rapidly, coming to terms with a series of environmental disasters happening around the globe which may be announcing the end times. We primarily follow high school teacher Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor) as he attempts to cling to normalcy — of most immediate concern, the Internet is down globally meaning that his students have no concept of how to study, while their parents are peeved that Pornhub is gone for good — while contemplating a reunion on the eve or Armageddon with his ex-wife Felicia (Karen Gillan). As sections of the country begin to fall into the ocean or disappear under flood waters (not to mention a giant sinkhole in the middle of town that makes the morning commute nigh impossible), Marty goes about his life, however much longer that might last, while attempting to make sense of a series of omnipresent billboards and TV commercials celebrating an unknown, bookish-looking man named Charles “Chuck” Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) on “39 great years.” With the cosmic calendar winding down and time on Earth becoming increasingly finite, the sense of the uncanny as well as the intertwining of their lives with that of Chuck’s becomes harder for Marty and Felicia to ignore (fans of Black Mirror will likely be able to anticipate where this is heading).
In the film’s second chapter, we’re properly introduced to our title subject, who we’re told in the narration will be dead within a year due to a brain tumor, not that he demonstrates any awareness of his impending demise. Instead, we observe Chuck as he idly walks a promenade, killing time during an accounting conference, where he becomes transfixed by a drumming busker (Taylor Gordon, credited here as The Pocket Queen). Overtaken by the compulsion to shake a leg, Chuck takes a lovelorn bystander (Annalise Basso) by the hand and proceeds to dazzle the assembled onlookers with an elaborate choreographed dance number which seamlessly segues from waltz to samba to freestyle. After soaking up the adoration from the crowd — and, it must be said, the sequence is undeniably showstopping; Hiddleston and Basso clearly put in the necessary rehearsal time — the questions remain: what compelled the unassuming-looking Chuck to briefly make himself the center of attention, and where did he learn those dance moves?
Answers are provided in the film’s third and final chapter, which focuses on Chuck’s early years where he’s primarily played as a young adolescent by Benjamin Pajak. Orphaned as a small child and living with his grandparents Sarah and Albie (Mia Sara and Mark Hamill, respectively), Chuck has a largely happy childhood. It’s one that sees him smitten with an older girl in an afterschool club and watching movie musicals and dancing to rock and roll in the kitchen with his grandmother, but also one frequently tempered by tragedy and undercut by the constraints of responsibility — Chuck wants to be a professional dancer, but his pragmatic grandfather urges him to go into accounting, arguing there’s both an art and nobility to math. There is also the matter of the cupola on the top floor of the house, barricaded behind a thick lock and expressly off limits to Chuck, which may or may not possess metaphysical qualities. Is it just a musty old room with rotting floor boards, or does it conceal the terrible curse of foreknowledge, robbing its inhabitants of the ignorance of what life has in store for them? And if it is the latter, will Chuck be able to keep his curiosity at bay?
Fittingly, The Life of Chuck functions as a mystery box where the final destination is ultimately of less concern than how we arrived there or how the disparate parts will fit together. The film introduces knowingly incongruous elements (characters whose appearance in earlier timelines that would seem to be impossible) and stray details that won’t be paid off until much later in the film (we first encounter the still-locked cupola in Marty’s storyline), while allowing motifs and dialogue to recur, often in “unexpected” new contexts. It all plays into the film’s non-denominational spirituality; that life itself is adhering to a grand design, which only becomes apparent upon reflection. Accordingly, the film offers a series of picayune moments that echo through time, gathering resonance like a snowball rolling down a hill. But for all the nods at stopping to acknowledge the small victories and simple pleasures of being alive, The Life of Chuck is rather hermetic and doggedly linear; every digression, pop culture reference, or throwaway line of dialogue feels machine-tooled for maximum poignancy. It’s a film about messiness and unpredictability that also feels like a remedial puzzle where every piece easily slides into place, feigning at the unknowability and vastness of existence yet revealing itself to be insular, bordering on myopic. Every meaty idea meant to be chewed on has, in actuality, been predigested and rendered somewhat flavorless. The search for meaning kind of feels like self-evident bromides.
Still, The Life of Chuck is a hard film to actively dislike. For all its overarching tidiness and overtures to explaining “the meaning of life,” the film is modest and unpretentious, which even extends to its cast that showcases actors you probably have fond memories of even if you haven’t thought of them in a while (in addition to Hamill and Sara, the film utilizes former young adult heartthrobs Matthew Lillard and Heather Langenkamp in showcase supporting roles). Flanagan and King purposefully keep Chuck a cipher whose life experiences are universal enough that one can’t help but see parallels in their own travails and perhaps find purpose in the randomness and disappointment — who hasn’t felt the flush of young love, lost a family member prematurely, or been cowed into abandoning the passions of childhood for a more sensible vocation?. But in it’s clear desperation to be liked, The Life of Chuck comes to serve as the proverbial spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. That perhaps explains the film unexpectedly winning the highly coveted People’s Choice Award at last fall’s Toronto International Film Festival, besting Oscar-winning titles like Emilia Pérez and Anora — after a week and a half of confrontational cinema that defies easy explanation, sometimes you’re simply helpless in the face of a film making the argument that not only do you matter, but that your death will be nothing less than momentous. In other words, Flanagan’s film is undoubtedly playing to the cheap seats, but that’s arguably likewise true of widely beloved King adaptations Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption. Those films have boasted considerable half-lives, and that very may well be the fate that awaits The Life of Chuck. The filmmakers are playing the long game here, almost as if they’ve baked in skepticism. If it doesn’t mean anything to you now, don’t worry — it will someday.
DIRECTOR: Mike Flanagan; CAST: Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Mark Hamill; Jacob Tremblay; DISTRIBUTOR: NEON; IN THEATERS: June 6; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 50 min.
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