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‘Life of Chuck’: New Stephen King Movie Is Surprisingly Heartwarming

8 0
07.09.2024

TORONTO, Canada—Mike Flanagan has made his name in the horror genre, and yet like his greatest spiritual inspiration Stephen King—whose work he’s brought to the screen with Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep—he’s first and foremost a dramatist with an abiding interest in the things that make us tick, bring us together, and haunt us both in the bright morning and the dark of night.

Thus, though The Life of Chuck is an intensely faithful adaptation of a King novella (from 2020’s If It Bleeds), it’s a film that’s as sweet as it is scary, and whose frights are the sort that come from all-too-relatable fears about being alone, being apart, and being unable to hold onto the people and memories that matter most.

Split into three acts that proceed in reverse chronological order, The Life of Chuck—which just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival—is a story about finding the beat, the path, the rhythm, and the magic of life, and if that sounds hokey, well, it is, at least as often as it is moving.

As he did with 2016’s Before I Wake, Flanagan operates in a decidedly sentimental vein with his latest, and there are instances when the light beaming through windows and the shadows engulfing his characters could stand to be a little less picture-picture manicured, just as the numerous parallels and echoes coursing throughout his tale might have benefited from being a tad more modest. Nonetheless, understatement isn’t part of the writer/director’s modus operandi here, and that’s ultimately to the benefit of his film,........

© The Daily Beast


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