REVIEW: “The Life of Chuck” (2025)

(Courtesy ebay) 

WRITER’S NOTE: The following was originally posted on my Facebook page on June 30, 2025. 

It begins where it ends. Earthquakes occur. Internet and phone connections get lost, as do TV signals. Patients disappear from hospital beds, while the monitors still running at the same rate. Lights going out. The lives of a small town school teacher and a local nurse reconnect over discussions about time, change, and environmental disasters (which could start feeling more like raptures). In the midst of these events, a mysterious billboard frequently appears, with the profile of a 39-year-old man named Charles Krantz, being honored for his years of service. Citizens dub him “the Oz of the Apocalypse.” 

In the same dramatic league as The Shawshank Redemption and, more specifically, The Green Mile, writer-director Mike Flanagan adapts Stephen King’s novella, The Life of Chuck (from the author’s collection of short stories titled, If It Bleeds). It chronicles—in reverse—the story of the titular accountant and optimist in three acts, and the mystery of how this all fits together. Flanagan has been making a name for himself in the horror genre in recent years, having adapted other King works for the screen (on the heels of Rob Reiner and Frank Darabont). He cameos in the film as a priest. 

Tom Hiddleston has never been more dimensional or empathetic than as the adult Chuck. Changing the aspect ratio from wide to tall when he fully appears, his performance is full of life, love, rhythm, and heartache. He even emulates Gene Kelly during a phenomenal, irresistible, and magical dance scene with a dance partner and street drummer, that can’t help but make you smile. 

Jacob Tremblay plays Chuck as a teenager, while Benjamin Pajak portrays him when he’s seven. The latter is raised by his grandparents (Mark Hamill and Mia Sara), still grieving the loss of Chuck’s parents. Hamill is almost unrecognizable, while Sara makes a return to the screen for the first time in sixteen years (reportedly as a favor for Flanagan). And it’s she who first teaches him how to dance, introduces him to movie musicals, and inspires him to later join a local dance company, which brings light in his life after an unexpected tragedy. Not to mention meeting his first crush. His grandfather, on the other hand, stresses about the importance and value of numbers, coming across and both discouraging and encouraging, but not one-sided? 

The Life of Chuck uses Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” as a literary metaphor for Chuck’s story, as well as those around him. It suggests the concept of “building a universe,” and contemplating “what happens to that universe when someone dies.” With an evocative score by the Newton Brothers (comforting over the credits) and rich narration by Nick Offerman, the story also ponders a time before the internet and social media, before relationships fell apart, and if they only exist in the past, like the mysterious attic in Chuck’s childhood household. (I couldn’t help but compare the first part of this film to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020.) 

While the film and story ponder “why God made the world,” and display views of the cosmos that are astounding, The Life of Chuck largely paints a secular, scientific, and humanistic worldview, with frequent references to late astronomer Carl Sagan, and a tone that swings back and forth from pessimism to optimism, melancholic to joyous, and haunting to uplifting. It’s an intellectually challenging film with some wonderful moments. It sure does contain multitudes, but it’s not all a wonderful life. 

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