Mike Flanagan | Bouquets & Brickbats

28/08/25

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Stephen King is probably the most screen-adapted of contemporary authors, but his novella, The Life of Chuck – first published in 2020 in the If it Bleeds collection – is certainly not the kind of story that most readers would expect from him. Rather than a spine-chilling tale of the supernatural, this is a moving and genre-defying project, that manages to tread the fine line between emotion and schmaltz with great skill. All kudos to director Mike Flanagan, who saw a way to make the story work on screen and went for it.

Divided into acts, told in reverse chronological order – I warned you it was unconventional! – the film begins in the present day with Act Three: Thanks, Chuck. The world is being assailed by biblical disasters: floods, earthquakes and – perhaps most disturbing of all – unreliable wifi! Middle school teacher, Marty Anderson (Chiwetel Ejiofor) reconnects with his former partner, Felicia Gordon (Karen Gillan), as they try to make sense of what appears to be the end of all things. And what’s with the sudden prevalence of billboard posters, thanking somebody called Chuck Krantz for ’39 Great Years!’?

In Act Two: Buskers Forever, we actually meet Chuck (Tom Hiddleston), a sober-suited and mild-mannered accountant going about his routine business – until he is transfixed by the drumming of street performer Taylor (Taylor Gordon) and launches into an extended dance routine that would put Gene Kelly to shame. During the performance he picks out of the crowd a complete stranger, Janice (Annalise Basso), to be his partner. Turns out she can dance too!

In Act Three: I Contain Multitudes, we meet the young Chuck – played by Cody Flanagan, Benjamin Pajak and Jacob Tremblay, as he grows up with his grandparents, Albie (Mark Hamill) and Sarah (Mia Sara). I rarely give a shout-out to casting directors but both Pajak and Tremblay look so alike, I find myself wondering if they’re actually related in real life. (They’re not.)

It’s in this section alone that there is a discreet touch of the supernatural, but hardly at the histrionic level we’ve come to expect from Mr King…

I’ve no doubt that some viewers will have their expectations dashed by this film, but Flanagan has handled the story with consummate skill, steering it to a moving and thought-provoking denouement, whilst anchoring his premise around the Walt Whitman poem, Song of Myself. It’s a profound meditation on the subject of life and death, one that arrives at the conclusion that all life is sacred and that the death of any human is a tragedy of epic proportion.

Through all its unexpected twists and turns, The Life of Chuck keeps me utterly compelled. Pajak in particular, making his film debut at the tender age of 12, is clearly destined for stardom. It’s also fun to spot a whole host of big league actors in cameo roles as the story unfolds. This is fearless filmmaking in an era where playing it safe seems to increasingly be the preferred route.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney

11/11/19

Stephen King famously disliked Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of his 1980 novel, The Shining – so much so that, in the 90s, he scripted a television series with the same name, one which he felt stuck closer to his original concept. (I haven’t seen it but the general opinion seems to be that it was lacklustre.) So it’s odd to see him executive producing this adaptation of the sequel, Doctor Sleep, considering it has a whole section devoted to Kubrick’s vision, complete with convincing lookalikes of Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duval. Go figure.

It’s many years after the events of The Shining and little Danny Torrence has, improbably, grown up to be the dead spit of Ewan McGregor. Now called Dan Torrence (see what he did there?), he’s understandably a troubled soul, addicted to alcohol and cocaine and still haunted by visions of his time at The Overlook Hotel – indeed, he has regular conversations with the late Dick Halloran (Carl Lumbly standing in for Scatman Crothers). Driven to desperate measures, Dan decides he has to change, so he takes off to a new town where nobody knows him, and where he has a chance of starting over. As the months pass, he cleans up his act and eventually takes a job as a hospital orderly, where he soon develops a reputation for easing the passing of dying patients and where he acquires the nickname of Doctor Sleep.

But trouble is coming in the shape of Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) and her band of travelling vapour junkies, addicted to murdering anyone with telepathic abilities and inhaling their unique aura in order to keep themselves alive, long past the time when they should be shuffling off to oblivion. When they fix their hungry sights on a talented teenager called Abra (Kyliegh Curran), she reaches out to Dan, who has been a kind of psychic pen-pal of hers for years, asking for his help. He reluctantly answers her call but the desperate struggle to elude these murderous wanderers inevitably leads back to a very familiar location…

Writer/director Mike Flanagan has done something more than the usual cheapie horror adaptation here. He takes his own sweet time to unload the various strands of the story, cross-cutting effortlessly from Dan to Abra to Rose and giving a very real sense of the events unfolding over the years. There are a few eerie moments along the way, but the supposedly scary scenes never connect as solidly as they might. The overall feel is one of unease rather than out-and out terror. Both McGregor and Ferguson submit nuanced performances and Curran has an appealing presence.

The main problem, however, lies in the film’s final act when Dan, Abra and Rose go hotfoot to Colorado for what feels suspiciously like The Overlook’s Greatest Hits. Flanagan’s team have done an uncanny job of recreating the look of Kubrick’s horror masterpiece, but the internal logic feels decidedly off: there’s never any real justification for them going there in the first place and I find myself asking too many awkward questions of the how, when and where variety as events gallop headlong towards a climactic cosmic punch-up.

It would have been braver, I think, to give us an Overlook that doesn’t already feel way too familiar. As it stands, this decision delivers a fatal wound to the proceedings, making the adventure’s final stretches a bit of an ordeal – and with a hefty running time of two hours and thirty-two minutes, sleep feels, at times, too close for comfort.

3.4 stars

Philip Caveney