As a director, Mike Flanagan seemed destined to spend his career making horror movies, until… The Life of Chuck. One imagines Flanagan flicking through his collection of Stephen King paperbacks in search of a new supernatural chiller for the big screen, when he hit upon the 2020 novella upon which this film is based.
Although best-known for his horror stories, immortalised through a procession of successful B movies, King has been a prolific author in many genres. I’ve never been a fan, finding his prose too pedestrian for comfort. Anybody genuinely interested in American horror fiction can hardly go past H.P. Lovecraft, whose writing feels like a plunge into the darkest recesses of the subconscious. For King it’s more profession than obsession.
The Life of Chuck is not a horror tale, although it has a large element of fantasy. Perhaps the scariest part is that the film is being widely described as “life affirming”, which instinctively puts me on the defensive, worried that a bucket of treacle lies in wait for the unwary viewer. For the most part, I’m sorry to say, Chuck fulfils those fears.