Midway through its runtime, Mike Flanagan’s Life of Chuck offers us a sort of incantation, with a line of dialogue from Stephen King’s story of the same name: “Do answers make a good thing better?” The implication here is a resounding “no,” which is fitting for the Haunting of Bly Mansion creator’s enigmatic (and esoterically structured) drama about embracing life, death, and cosmic mysteries. Yet it also ends up proving the point in the wrong ways, oscillating between crude literalism and sloppiness, robbing the film of its most joyful power.
Like King’s story—one of four novellas collected in If It Bleeds—“The Life of Chuck” is divided into three chapters, each narrated in reverse by Nick Offerman. The story begins with “Chapter Three,” which chronicles the collapse of the world from the perspective of a small American town. The internet has been down for months, and is about to go down along with television and cellphone service. Meanwhile, climate change is ravaging nearly every country (California nearly drifted into the Pacific Ocean), and suicide rates are skyrocketing, leaving local doctor Felicia (Karen Gillan) trying to keep her head above water. Still, Flanagan succeeds in the daunting task of sprinkling this premise of rampant death with bouts of grisly, surreal humor, as Felicia’s former lover, teacher Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor), tries to convince nihilistic parents to continue educating their children.
The most common topics in this town include the latest catastrophic news, people asking each other about strange billboards they've seen, and a bespectacled, professionally dressed man named Charles “Chuck” Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) thanking “39 great “Is he a doctor? A radio host? A local TV personality? No one seems to know, but that’s just one of many questions haunting the film’s characters — and, at this point, the audience, who will no doubt be wondering how this catastrophe happened. Yet “Chuck’s Life” doesn’t rush to provide linear answers, at least not at first. Instead, it offers thoughtful conversations between Felicia and Marty, who contemplate not just the state of the world, but the very existence of humanity, now that society may be breathing its last.
How Chuck fits into this meditative, Twilight Zone-like epic is left in limbo as the film moves into “Chapter Two”—and eventually “Chapter One”—the sections that actually follow Hiddleston’s character. The middle section of the film, however, consists almost entirely of an improvised dance sequence, in which a seemingly frustrated Chuck joins a heartbroken young girl, Lorraine (Annalise Basso), in a spontaneous street dance session, set to the beat of a drummer. It has no actual connection to the previous film, on the surface, but it creates a fascinating thematic resonance with its bleak predecessor, as a portrait of lives lived to the fullest despite regrets.
The scene is nothing like Flanagan’s work, full of energy and positivity that doesn’t characterize the horror master, but it’s incredibly complex, with the kind of rhythmic framing and slashing that reminds you of someone who’s spent his entire career making musicals. It’s a shame that the film’s score itself is rarely strong or original, recalling the familiar notes of Interstellar and The Social Network without the lasting influence of either.
In the film’s concluding section, the film traces Chuck’s childhood through a sad, poignant story in which his grandfather (Mark Hamill) becomes a vital focal point. The story deals with ghostly hauntings and a locked door leading to a creepy secret attic—more like that, Mike—but it also touches on the origins of Chuck’s relationship with dance. To give away too much of the plot would be an insult to the film, but this final section also features echoes (through dialogue and production design) that run throughout the rest of the film, creating small connections between past and present that infuse the film’s mysteries with a sense of wonder.
But it’s unfortunate that “The Life of Chuck” abandons its previous role as a film, building on this poetic style, and inelegantly explaining the mysterious connections that existed between Chuck and the likes of Felicia and Marty. While the story could have been more about passing hints and innuendos, the film continues to move away from a coming-of-age story into details that emphasize a very literal, mechanical “revelation,” which slowly begins to consume the larger themes of the film.
But until that happens, Life of Chuck is a delightful film, with its wild tonal shifts between horror and raw sentimentality that work with surprising precision, its hilarious supporting cast played by Flanagan, and its general refusal to be cynical even in the face of despair. But any romantic notions the film might have had are quickly evaporated when it begins to explain the disappointing method behind the sleight of hand—until that explanation becomes the magic trick itself.
