The Life of Chuck (Mike Flanagan, 2024, USA)

The Life of Chuck is a difficult movie to explain, and an even harder one to market or sell. Based on a short story by Stephen King, and adapted by King superfan Mike Flanagan, Chuck is a labor of love for the filmmaker. The film is perhaps the best display of King's schmaltz since The Green Mile (1999), and Flanagan seems to be the best director since Frank Darabont at bringing the more sentimental and humanistic works of Stephen King to the screen.

This is not to say that the film is without unsettling or even horrific elements. The entire first third of the film is effectively an apocalyptic horror story (which, we will later learn, is assembled inside the memories of a dying man named Chuck, played by Tom Hiddleston). Chiwetel Ejiofor plays the lead in this section, a schoolteacher who is attempting to navigate the end of the world. For many watching the film, this section may prove to be the most effective, and it certainly feels the most like a Stephen King story.

The latter two segments center around the life of the titular Chuck. The first involves an extended dance routine (props to Tom Hiddleston for his dance moves), while the final section involves the young Chuck's coming-of-age, and features a great turn from Mark Hamill as Chuck's grandfather. While Flanagan's choice to include extensive voiceover narration from the original story (as if from an audiobook) might be a misstep in retrospect, the film somehow manages to work as a cohesive whole. Life of Chuck is remarkable for being a quite sentimental film that still manages to have some surprises, both thematically and structurally. It is also filled with excellent performances, including some that may even qualify as cameos (Matthew Lillard). Life of Chuck is an excellent piece of cinema.

8/10