The Life Of Chuck (2025)
The Life of Chuck is a Stephen King adaptation that’s unlike the rest of his archives, instead of being pure horror and thriller vibes, we have a bittersweet and meaningful drama.
The Life of Chuck treads over a multitude of topics including the meaning of life, memories that you cherish, what it means to be a human and the connections that you make along the way. The messages are what works here and you do finish this film thinking about your own life, looking back on moments that are sentimental to yourself, which was clearly this films goals. The quote that stood with me in this was “I contain multitudes”. This highlights the message of how complex humans are, how many layers every person on earth has. This film tries to highlight that no matter how ordinary someone’s life is, they are still incredible specimens. I did love the themes and messages of this Mike Flanagan film.
The reverse narrative is so unique and actually works like a treat and is affective in many aspects. Mike Flanagan clearly wanted us as the audience to rather look back on this film and reflect on all the little details that bring this film together, it wants us to think about life more delicately and emotionally. I absolutely love that this 3 act structure gave it us in reverse, I completely loved Mike Flanagans idea with this beginning. We follow a world full of random characters at first, showing the universe dying around them, phone lines dying and natural disasters occurring, with the ominous flash of a man called chuck lingering in the background. Flanagan allows this to stay mysterious and a scary aspect of this film, but as you continue watching you will piece together why this is such hauntingly beautiful first act and how crucial it is to the story. The 2nd and 3rd act follow a young and older chuck. Older chuck dancing through the streets and not really understanding what compelled him to do so but highlights how life isn’t defined by its end and showing its fleeting moment. Younger chuck is learning life, being told life lessons and themes that will shape his future. I don’t want to delve deeper into this plot as it’s one you need to piece together yourself. Every character you will retrospectively piece together the story and sit their in realisation throughout.
The performances are compelling enough to work for such an ambitious screenplay. I found the standouts to be side characters away from chuck. Matthew Lillard gave a haunting yet profound monologue in the First Act that has stood with me to this very moment, but he is only on screen during this moment. Chiwetel Ejiofor portrays his character in an empathetic and eloquent fashion with intellectual dialogue and such emotion from his words and facial expressions that make you feel so dearly for his situation. Mia Sara is a convincing playful grandmas who loves to be joyful and loving, while Mark Hamill plays the stern yet caring grandfather who wants the best for Chuck. Tom Hiddleston is of course Chuck and delivers a restrained yet joyful performance, capturing what life’s meant to be all about so innocently.
Mike Flanagan’s direction is highlighted with almost a dream like haze across the film’s quality, it feels like we are watching from the perspective of Chuck’s mind looking back on his life and like it’s not showing us the story in real time. Flanagan uses beautiful night starry Sky’s and golden sun sets to capture the world of Chuck, but the cinematography isn’t the main focus for this film, the narrative carries that for him.
The main issue with this film was the over reliance of Voice Over. The narrator played by Nick Offerman is a powerful and fantastic storytelling voice, yet we hear way too much of that. We aren’t left to sit with emotions or let our characters do the talking with narrative moments, facial expressions or silence that would speak a thousand words. The narrator tells us how it is bluntly but this results in us not really connecting with Chuck or really understanding how he contains multitudes.
Not only this but I felt quite underwhelmed with the films ending as it reveals a ‘twist’ with one of the key aspects of the film, to not go in the cupola. Yet the pay off wasn’t really worth it and it didn’t leave the impact it would have liked to have left. I also found the final act as a whole to lose me towards the end, with the school dance, I do understand it is crucial to Chuck’s philosophy of containing multitudes and finding why life is so beautiful, but we stook with the dancing aspect since act 2, and it just didn’t feel emotionally impactful as much as other scenes did like dancing with his grandma in the kitchen or being told stories by his grandpa. Tom Hiddleston despite doing well with the material just didn’t have much to do and actually had a lot less screen time than the younger version of Chuck played by Benjamin Pajak, who actually gave a compassionate and pure performance. Hiddleston also never has been able to portray an American well before, with his accent still being British-ified quite obviously too.
The Life of Chuck worked for me, I found that this film will work for others who are looking for a film that reflects on life and its previous acts. It’s a slow character driven essay type of film that is delicate with its storytelling and wants to use its characters to highlight a bigger element of life. This is defiantly a film that tries to explore existential and deep themes in a profound way that actually does work, for the most part. The Non Linear storytelling is one of this films selling points and if you want a rather different narrative structure you should definitely give it a watch
Overall, The Life of Chuck is a well intentioned film that highlights that no matter what you are doing in life or where you are at, you contain multitudes and you are extraordinary. It’s a film that highlights memories, compassion, love and how complex humans really are. The Reverse Chronological order structure works intelligently and Mike Flanagan’s strong direction allows the film to have a strong visual presence. Emotional and compassionate performances from most of the cast allow this films script to flourish. However, the reliance of the narration for Chuck’s life gives us a distance between fully getting to see Chuck’s multitudes, as well as a lacklustre ending that could have gave us more to think about. This is a meaningful a deep routed time that leaves you with plenty to think and reminisce about.