‘THE LIFE OF CHUCK’ Contains Multitudes

Mike Flanagan has always had a unique way of looking at death. From his first breakout series, The Haunting of Hill House, to his more mainstream horror features (Oculus, Doctor Sleep), he’s seen ghosts not as ghastly specters but as existential hangovers. A whispered celebration of life that doubles as an affirmation of its titanic meaning. Though the horror auteur is most closely associated with his genre work — and for good reason; few existing filmmakers come close to touching his impressive oeuvre — The Life of Chuck, an affirming story of life, love, dance, and numbers (but still featuring a probably-apocalypse and ghosts), is perfectly suited to his very particular sensibilities.

The tale, based on one of Stephen King’s non-horror novellas, is told backwards. Or so it seems. We start with Act Three, and the world is ending. The internet is on the fritz. Entire shelves of California are breaking off into the Pacific. Sinkholes swallow up cars in the American Midwest as Germany battles back active volcanoes. Pornhub appears to be permanently offline. Middle school teacher Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor) tries to teach his class Walt Whitman, but most of the chairs are empty. Absenteeism is on the rise across schools, workplaces, hospitals. So is mass suicide. The end is nearing. They feel it in their bones.

As the ecological disasters mount, Marty turns to ex-wife Felicia (Karen Gillan) to lament what appears to be a very fast-approaching global apocalypse. When the last lights of the world flicker, petty squabbles seem just so… petty. Compounding the confusion and anxiety of this social meltdown is the random appearance of billboards featuring a very plainly dressed man (Tom Hiddleston) with the message: “39 Great Years! Thanks Chuck!” Street graffiti mimics the sentiment; the phrase “We love Chuck” is thrown up on office parks and hospitals. Soon, Chuck appreciation ads are the only thing on TV. Biplanes write their thanks to Chuck in the sky. Marty, puzzled and perhaps horrified, posits that this random guy, this Chuck, is the last living meme. And that’s that.

As Flanagan’s film moves back through acts, we begin to know this Chuck guy. Appreciate his decency. Understand his practicality. But puzzle over what drives this very average, middle-aged man to turn into a prophet. And then it hits you.

The Life of Chuck is about the magnitude of a human life. Its multitudinous awe. The existence of humanity may be but a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of the universe, but that doesn’t mean an eighth-grade dance isn’t an epic event in one’s own life. Even as time advances and adult life narrows, it deepens. Routine becomes religion. The minutiae, the meaning. We are a universe unto ourselves, and to those we hold dearest.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.” Oscar Wilde’s words feel like a thesis statement for The Life of Chuck, a film that doesn’t explain itself so much as it lets you feel your way through it. As you may have surmised, Flanagan’s film elicits a meditative, philosophic state of being that leaves one reaching for the words of great men. This is in no small part because it fundamentally celebrates life and art, dance, poetry, the sacred mess of human connection, and the math that binds it all together, while encouraging the viewer to reflect on the largeness of their own three-act structure. It nests a celebratory message within a pathos-laced shell: “We are doomed” and “We are saved” exist in unbreakable harmony. Life begets death begets life.

While King’s novella provides the narrative bones and Flanagan the haunting, self-affirming directorial crackle, the cast brings the story to vivid life. Flanagan has a very particular acting style he draws out of his performers — something that lives somewhere in the Venn diagram of reflective, poetic, and deeply earnest. No one would accuse the man of being funny, though. His characters often say the things they’ve been holding onto for years, and he just happens to catch them in the moment of release. His work is rich with these beautifully painful beats; characters at the end of something, finally looking back at their lives, their friendships, their loves. Even when it’s wrapped in carnage. I can’t not think of the moment in Midnight Mass when a character reflects on his life just before the sun rises, and melts away, because he’s just turned into a vampire. Only Flanagan could make you cry during a vampire-death-by-sunlight scene.

And that’s what makes The Life of Chuck such a perfect fit for Flanagan. It’s not a horror film, but it remains unmistakably haunted. Rich with interiority, it urges us to reckon with both our infinitesimal smallness and our indefinable magnitude. The ensemble cast sells that paradox in every scene, each performance clicking into place like the gears of a Swiss watch. It’s a top-to-bottom stellar lineup: Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, a breakout turn from young Benjamin Pajak, plus Mark Hamill, Jacob Tremblay, and small but potent roles from David Dastmalchian, Matthew Lillard, and Harvey Guillén.

Of course, Flanagan’s go-to collaborators are here too, including Kate Siegel (his real-life wife), Samantha Sloyan, and Annalise Basso, grounding the film with the emotional fluency that defines his best work. The ethereal score really drives home the meditative soul of the film. There’s a sequence early in the first act, two characters looking up at the stars during a moment of seismic change, that’s profoundly affecting, both visually and emotionally. Not everything survives the leap from novella to screen — particularly a wraparound voiceover from Nick Offerman. Logistically, I get why it’s there, but it was more distracting than enlightening, despite being poetic in moments.

It hit me in a way only Flanagan’s work does: quiet, reflective, then suddenly overwhelming. I won’t hesitate to call The Life of Chuck one of the best films of the year; hardly a shock, given my affection for the horror auteur’s previous work, but surprising nonetheless, considering he’s playing outside his usual sandbox while still using a similar toolbox. It’s sharp where it needs to be, tender where it counts, and full of meaning I’ll be unpacking for a while. It’s not exactly a crowdpleaser in the traditional sense, it doesn’t spoon-feed its meaning, march from A to B to C, or necessarily leave you full of hope and wonder. It works backwards. It meanders. It expects something of you. And yet, it remains deeply accessible. You don’t have to understand every beat to feel it. That’s the power of a story driven not by exposition, but by emotion.

That’s the whole point, really. Life doesn’t make clean sense either. We fuck up. We lie. We fall down. We hope someone else can clean up the mess. We destroy our world and pray that someone smarter or kinder will patch it back together. We rarely know why the bad things happen, and we often can’t stop them, but we can still feel our way through it all. And in that stumble toward meaning, even the tiniest moments take on cosmic weight. Because we contain multitudes. Because we are the meaning.

CONCLUSION: Mike Flanagan adapts a not-so-scary Stephen King story to tremendous effect with ‘The Life of Chuck’, crafting an ethereal, poetic drama that juxtaposes the vastness of time and the universe against the quiet importance of a single human life. The cast is outstanding, the story is profound, the direction is assured, and the result pulses with the beauty, messiness, and meaning of being alive.