Tripwire Reviews Mike Flanagan’s The Life Of Chuck

A Life Lived In Three Parts

Tripwire’s editor-in-chief Joel Meadows reviews Mike Flanagan’s The Life Of Chuck, in UK cinemas now…

The Life Of Chuck
Director: Mike Flanagan
Stars: Tom Hiddleston, Jacob Tremblay, Benjamin Pajak, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mark Hamill

Based on Stephen King’s novella, The Life Of Chuck offers the viewer three connected vignettes in the life of Charles Krantz, the Chuck of the title. King adaptations aren’t exactly uncommon but for every The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, there’s a Tommyknockers and The Cell. Director Flanagan has a pretty decent pedigree in horror, having directed another King adaptation Doctor Sleep and Netflix’s The Fall Of The House Of Usher.

So the film runs in a non linear fashion, taking us from Chuck’s childhood through his teenage years and to his eventual passing from a deadly disease. Chuck is a complex character, a man who enjoyed dancing as a kid but is disavowed from pursuing this as a career by his grandfather Albie Krantz (Hamill). So we get a warm and thought-provoking piece punctuated by many of King’s familiar tropes with an impressive cast. Hiddleston offers a classy performance while the actors playing the younger versions of Chuck display range and emotional depth. Hamill is excellent as Chuck’s accountant grandfather, a man with a dark secret while Ejiofor as his teacher is as always very watchable on screen. The Life Of Chuck inhabits the Kingverse in the same way that the best of his movie adaptations do and it feels at times like a literary experience. We have an omniscient narrator tying the three chapters together nicely.

You do come out of the film with a sense of connection and empathy with the characters. Flanagan is a director who has made quite a name for himself over the past few years and The Life Of Chuck is an affable and likeable King adaptation with a very solid cast and a genuinely intriguing premise. He has a lightness of touch helming the action that draws the viewer in here. It does have horror undertones in places though. The chapter featuring Albie introduces us to the mystery that lurks in the locked room in the house that they live in but it is never overt. The film is more of a magical realism take on the world, an approach that is very effective, as well as an elegant melancholy that runs throughout all three of the chapters. The Life of Chuck is well worth checking out for viewers looking for something a little different on the big screen.