I will live my life until my life runs out
Main Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Mark Hamill
Director: Mike Flanagan
If you had asked me a few years ago to make a list of the most unfilmable Stephen King works, the short story (novella?) The Life of Chuck would have been on that list. Or maybe it wouldn’t, because, honestly, I never gave the story much thought after reading it. But it definitely seemed unfilmable. Until Mike Flanagan came along and did what Mike Flanagan does, which is make amazing, effective movies with, usually, origins in horror. Which, since it comes from Stephen King, I suppose The Life of Chuck technically DOES, even though it’s not a horror story.
What it is, is that other brand of King, the author of things like The Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me, and The Green Mile. That’s the Stephen King we get here, and Mike Flanagan wants to be a part of that circle.
Enter Chuck.
THE LIFE OF CHUCK is really three stories in one, told in reverse order, and the first story is about the death of Chuck, while not really even featuring Chuck as a character. Instead, we meet math teacher Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiorfor) and his ex-wife, nurse Felicia Gordon (Karen Gillen) as they are faced with the end of the world. The two reunite for a brief moment in a back yard as they sit and watch the stars go out in the night sky one by one, signaling the end of the world, and all the while they kept seeing billboards and TV advertisements thanking Chuck Krantz for his years of service. Marty and Felicia have no idea who Chuck is.
Cut to Tom Hiddelston as Chuck Krantz who, while away on a business trip one day, is stricken with the desire to dance when he hears a street performer playing her drum kit.
In the prose version, this section of the story comes across as very odd. Why is Stephen King writing a story about a guy dancing in the street on a random day? Honestly, it doesn’t come across any more sensibly in the movie, but at least in this version we have the music and the spectacle as the crowd forms and starts getting into it with Chuck and his dance partner, Janice Halliday, a woman having the worst day of her life.
In the third section of the movie, we see young Chuck, who was sent to live with his grandparents after his parents were killed. This is where he gets not only his love of numbers, leading to his eventual job as an accountant, but also his love of dance. This came from his grandmother, played by Mira Sara who returned to acting at the request of Mike Flanagan for this role (his grandfather is played by Mark Hamill), and later at a dance class taught by one of his teachers after school, where he meets his first love.
When THE LIFE OF CHUCK was released in theaters, it came and went in a blink—I’m 99% sure it never even came to my town—and then quickly vanished off the face of the earth for some reason. I mean, you’ve got Mike Flanagan and Stephen King, usually a perfect match, but this movie just didn’t make any kind of splash at all, and that’s too bad, because I dug it HUGE.
Hiddleston is just so damned charming in everything he does, and the plot is just so damned weird and unflinching in its weirdness, unapologetically beautiful that I’d be willing to bet 90% of the people who see it watch the credits go by wondering what they just saw and why it’s left them so sad.
Honestly, I’ve no idea why this movie came and went so quickly and quietly—I thought for sure those two names would mean a huge opening—but I very strongly recommend it to any- and everyone who has eyes and a Hulu account (where it’s currently streaming).
I’ve given you as much of the plot as I can, I’ve told you who’s involved, and if those names don’t get your attention, I don’t know what will. THE LIFE OF CHUCK is still an incredibly weird story told in a very WTF manner by both King and Flanagan, but my God if it isn’t a compelling watch with some wonderful performances, made by a man who was put on this earth to make compelling, wonderful movies.
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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