If the end is the most normal thing in the world: you can’t better adapt Stephen King.
The cinema loves to tell the end of the world as if it wanted to produce the pictures when the “Day after Tomorrow” is once moving in (or, depending on the mood or worldview, soon). “The Life of Chuck” is a story located in an American every city that begins so normally and inconspicuously that you can literally hear it rumbling in the background, as if the wizard of OZ behind the curtain is serving his hell.
Recommendations of the editorial team
Danger!
Mike Flanagan’s film adaptation of the short story of Stephen King won the audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, which is always a recommendation enough to take an attentive look at the film. The director is known for his horror films, his show series for Netflix (“Spuk in Bly Manor” and “The Fall of the House Usher”) and already two King adaptations, “Das Game” and the “Shining” sequel “Awakens Doctor Sleeps”. His new film is a small, albeit delightful step for humanity, but a big step for him. Not necessarily away from the fantastic cinema, for which you know it, but towards a more playful handling of narrative and cinematic means.
Tom Hiddleston is the ideal line -up as a title character, a guy as all -American and generic as if the British actor have been injected the essence of Jimmy Stewart, “Mister Chuck Goes to Armageddon”, so to speak (albeit with significantly more rhythm in the blood: a sequence, in the “Chuck” in the middle of the road to the beat of a drummer, is a case for death -proof Applause when you sit in an audience that has a pulse).
The end of the world as we knew them
How it all can be and how it is related, how the story can begin with the fact that California sinks into the sea and still not everything is over, all of this is put together in a daring narrative trick, three longer passages that are told chronologically from front to back, “irreversible” as a staging by Frank Capra: One is amazed. And can’t really believe that this works – even working dazzling. What a miraculous, wonderful little film!
Our rating: five stars
“The Life of Chuck” starts on July 24, 2025 in German cinemas. Even in front of the camera: Karen Gillan and Chiwetel EjioFor.