The Life of Chuck (2025)
Stephen King’s Wonder Years
The 1980s belonged to Stephen King, as do the 2020s. Forty-five years ago, films like The Shining, ‘Salem’s Lot, Christine, and Cujo (not to mention Carrie in the mid-70s) helped define the Creepy Corner of our pop culture landscape. In the last half-decade, the world’s most famous and prolific horror novelist has seen over a dozen movies and TV shows adapted from his books, with others still in the pipeline. The new century has proven fertile ground for King’s brand of small-town suspicions, broken families, and timeless, shadowy entities who gorge on fear–leaving a tar-thick trail of blood, mass hysteria, and generational trauma in their wake.
While some King fans no doubt celebrate this reliable flow of content, recent adaptations fail to capture the essence, the “King-ness”, of the source material. 2013 saw the release of King’s Doctor Sleep, a follow-up novel to his 1977 smash, The Shining. It’s a layered, violent, and emotionally powerful sequel that reads like a movie. Unfortunately, director Mike Flanagan’s big-screen version stripped out most of the book’s content (not an exaggeration), and replaced it with a meadowful of ‘member berries that directly reference Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 Shining film in ways the Doctor Sleep novel tastefully avoided (this is particularly ironic since King has long reviled Kubrick’s picture as a clueless and compromised translation of his work).
This is too often the rule instead of the exception, saddling audiences with feature-length compilations of re-imagined scenes from earlier movies, which had, in turn, been best-shot attempts to streamline doorstop-sized best-sellers into cinematic products with manageable run-times (the ol’ Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox analogy). The 2-part It remake, the second go at Pet Sematary, and countless others, comprise a collective Exhibit A in the case against Hollywood’s relentless IP strip mining.*
First-time adaptations don’t fare much better. Earlier this year, The Monkey, King’s eerie, thrilling, and utterly sincere short story about guilt (which appeared in the 1985 collection, Skeleton Crew) was turned into an overlong, shallow joke from a filmmaker who, by all evidence, is allergic to sincerity. For what he did to The Monkey, Osgood Perkins should be sent away for good–not to Movie Jail, but to the deepest, dankest spider hole in Movie Gitmo, where he can reflect on his innumerable sins until true, eternal punishment takes hold.
By now I’m sure you’re expecting this preamble to roll into a scathing review of the latest King adaptation, The Life of Chuck–especially since Mike “Doctor Sleep” Flanagan has once again taken the reins. But I love a good twist, and am happy to report that this is not only one of 2025’s best films, it is also a revelation for Stephen King readers old and new, devoted and indifferent. It’s a jaw-dropping achievement that defies genre, and maybe even invents a new one with each of its 110 captivating minutes.
It sounds like a cop-out to say that I can’t write too much about the plot without giving everything away, but that’s genuinely the corner King and Flanagan have painted me into.
Here goes nothin’...
The film is presented as three acts, told in reverse chronological order. We first encounter Chuck Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) as the mysterious man on a billboard who is being thanked for “39 Great Years”. He looks like a 1960s accountant, sitting upright behind a desk, lightly holding a coffee mug, and smiling a pursed-lipped, brochure smile. The weird thing is, no one knows A) who Chuck Krantz is, B) who he works (worked?) for, C) what he spent nearly four decades doing, or D) why his service deserves a hundred-foot sign of gratitude in the middle of town.
Few people notice the billboard at first. The world, it seems, is coming to a painful and literal end. An earthquake-stricken California is floating away; torrential weather events erode whole cities.** Internet access becomes sluggish, then spotty, then non-existent, punctuated by the sobering collapse of Pornhub. Those in the dwindling population who haven’t yet given in to suicide shuffle away from jobs that no longer matter, precariously navigating power outages and spontaneous sinkholes on Main Street.
Two of these survivors are a high school teacher named Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his ex-wife, a nurse named Felicia (Karen Gillan). As the world crumbles, they rekindle their relationship by, in part, speculating about those weird “Thanks Chuck” billboards–which become more prolific around town, and soon start showing up on what’s left of broadcast television (and in even more unexpected places).
I’ll tap the brakes on describing the plot, which, thirty minutes into the run-time, has yet to introduce our main character beyond a mysterious advertisement. Since we know the film has begun at the end, the final moments of this opening segment leave the screenplay with an ungodly amount of second- and third-act heavy lifting to do. We know nothing about Chuck’s life so far, so how can we make sense of The Life of Chuck?
And didn’t Tom Hiddleston do a lot of dancing in the trailers? What’s going on here?
I haven’t read the short story that Flanagan brought to the screen, but his aproach feels (in the best possible way) like watching a Stephen King novel. Nick Offerman provides hefty narration throughout, in the wry “Uncle Stevie” voice that frequently pops up in the horror master’s writing (when he’s not actively trying to scare the hell out of us). In this way, The Life of Chuck unfolds like a bedtime story, where we, the moviegoing stand-ins for King’s “Constant Reader” are taken on a journey of nostalgia clothed in mystery, with the possibility of some otherworldly terror nibbling its way in from the edges.
In Act Two, Chuck is a flesh-and-blood adult who looks to be about the same age as the guy on the billboard. While on break from a work conference, he makes his way through a sunny California promenade where, for a few fateful hours, his life intersects with a talented busker named Taylor (Taylor “The Pocket Queen” Gordon) and the recently dumped Janice (Annalise Basso). This is the shortest yet most thematically impactful of the three acts; it’s also where the dancing comes in. Moving into Act One, though, there are still far more questions than answers.
Everything comes together in the home stretch (which, of course, is to say, the first inning). This is our prolonged glimpse into Chuck’s formative years, which he spent living with his grandparents after having tragically been orphaned. Inspired in part by Grandma Sarah’s (Mia Sara) grooving-while-cooking spirit, Chuck develops a passion for dance that helps him build confidence, make friends, and (for a little while, anyway) get the girl (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss).
Balancing out this coming-of-age fairy tale is Chuck’s brooding, alcoholic, accountant grandfather, Albie (Mark Hamill). He’s not only a chronically depressed slave to his work, he also guards a deep dark secret having to do with the house’s padlocked attic. In adolescence, Chuck is pulled between extreme forces of light and dark: Albie’s well-intentioned, dreams-smashing pragmatism, and the free-spirited musings of Sarah and two of his teachers–who, respectively, impart wisdom about, and are instructed by, the boundless possibilities of his mind.
From beginning to end, end to beginning, The Life of Chuck is Stephen King’s The Wonder Years. He and Flanagan revel in the sun-kissed, buttery filter of youthful discovery while subtly introducing a supernatural element whose impact will reverberate until Chuck is little more than a cryptic advertisement at the end of the world. The film is also a bit like The Usual Suspects, in that it demands a second viewing in order to pick up and piece together the Grand Scheme hints peppered throughout the story; some of these are so on-the-nose they have zits; others will hit you a week later, when waking up from a dream.
The movie is being advertised as a feel-good, life-affirming romp about Big Lessons and Making Every Day Count. It is those things, but only to the extent that Stand By Me is a wistful reminiscence about camping with friends. There are some genuinely disturbing and suspenseful moments in The Life of Chuck. Nothing gory or visually traumatic, mind you (its “R” rating is mostly due to language). But a handful of thematic elements and classic horror movie setups make this one a bit of a jumper.
Speaking of surprises, I’ll fall over dead if Mark Hamill isn’t nominated for playing Albie. There’s not an ounce of Luke Skywalker or The Joker in his portrayal, and while I’m grateful to see this A+ performance so late in his career, I wonder what other great turns we’ve been denied, either through choice or circumstance.
“Choice”.
That word brings us right back to Stephen King owning the 2020’s. I haven’t read all of King’s works (hell, I’d be surprised if he has), and that includes “The Life of Chuck”, which appeared in his recent short story collection, If it Bleeds. I can say that I’ve never seen another story of his that’s like this one: free of cynicism, violence, and overt darkness (Stand By Me/“The Body” comes closest). Because the author has become bona fide IP, I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to watch a movie that doesn’t go out of its way to connect to the wider “King-verse”. There are no references to Bangor, Derry, or Castle Rock; no Randall Flagg cackling in the shadows; and nary an undead pre-teen in sight.
This is an utterly surprising and utterly delightful look at a master craftsman’s Third Act Twist, a reminder of why he’s been revered not just as spinner of spooky yarns but as a deft, humanist storyteller for half a century. I know in my (bag of) bones that much of the Stephen King™ offerings yet to come will tread far-too-familiar ground. But I also know there’s still hope for fresh beginnings, even at the very end.
*Would ya look at that? There’s a whole It spin-off streaming series coming to HBO this fall.
**A note to my Conservative friends/potential audience members: Speaking from first-hand experience, there is much in Act Three that will compel you to get up and walk out of the theatre. King and Flanagan do a cheerleader’s shoulder stand on top of their Global Warming soapbox, with at least one character placing mankind’s imminent demise squarely at the feet of “right-wing nutjobs”. But if you stay to the end and absorb the full context of What It All Means, there’s a good chance you’ll have the last laugh. I certainly did.
