Movie: The Life of Chuck (2025)
Production Companies: Intrepid Pictures, Red Room Pictures, FilmNation Entertainment, QWGmire
Distributed by: Neon
Producers: Mike Flanagan, Trevor Macy
Directed by: Mike Flanagan
Written by: Mike Flanagan
Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Mia Sara, Jacob Tremblay, Mark Hamill, Nick Offerman
Review by: Stefano Todaro

Mike Flanagan’s streak of brutally overwritten and self-important dialogue continues with The Life of Chuck. His work from the last several years, I’m mainly talking about his run of Netflix horror shows, has been frustrating. It’s a collection of well-made horror that is completely weighed down by insistent and endless character monologues. His characters don’t speak or respond to things like humans.

The Life of Chuck suffers from this same fate. It’s a competently made piece of work that gets completely crushed by exhausting dialogue and long (but completely weightless) monologues. To put it plainly: every character just keeps talking. They won’t stop. I love dialogue-heavy films, the Before Sunrise trilogy movies are some of my favorite films ever made, but only if done well. What makes the conversation in The Life of Chuck all the more frustrating is that everybody wants to say the deepest or most quotable thing. Everybody says something that might end up on a mug at Home Goods. It’s a film that so desperately wants to strike an emotional chord with its audience, but miserably fails because of how sterile it all feels. Every aspect and every character has been polished to death, not leaving any room for the true grittiness of life. It feels like it was written for that same type of “Netflix first” audience for which his horror shows were made. The sterility and the blandness of it all make it impossible to relate to.

It wasn’t just the conversations I struggled with either. When characters weren’t yapping, a way too loud Nick Offerman narration took over. I know it wasn’t a theater audio issue because other parts of the film were too quiet. His cloying narration was another reason my eyes rolled into the back of my head so much. But maybe Stephen King is more to blame for that. I haven’t read the source material, so I’m not certain how much of the story was originally a narration.

To put it as bluntly as possible, I found the first 35ish minutes (Act Three) to be absolutely unbearable. The beginning third of the film is where Flanagan’s worst sensibilities manifested the most. The rest of the film is hardly any better. I know The Life of Chuck will find its audience, and I know some people will feel emotionally connected to it, but I’m certainly not one of those people. It’s all low-hanging fruit after low-hanging fruit. It’s chock-full of “aha” moments that are anything but “aha” moments. Rather than life-affirming, it was cringey and corny. “You contain multitudes,” a character repeats to Chuck. Good grief.

4.9/10

By: Stefano Todaro