It’s been said that, just as God is triune, human beings are made up of three parts: mind, body, and soul. Though this simplification ignores the fact that the body and what we think of as the mind are both incredibly complex and themselves made up of innumerable parts. (The soul might be discovered to be complex and multi-faceted as well if we could study it scientifically, but that’s an ontological debate for another day.) The human brain alone contains around 86 billion neurons with 100 trillion synaptic connections to each other. Within this structure lies all our thoughts and feelings, our memories and dreams, our sense of self and every fact we’ve ever learned. It keeps the rest of our body running continuously without conscious thought, and when it begins to break down, it can wreak all sorts of havoc.
The Life of Chuck, directed by Mike Flanagan and based on a novella of the same name by Stephen King, is a film that asks big ontological questions like the one I avoided earlier. Though Flanagan and King are both better known for their forays into horror than they are for their dramas, they’re both deeply humanistic artists and that humanism is on full display here. That’s not to say that The Life of Chuck is fully grounded and lacking in imagination. From the opening scenes of the film, which play out an apocalyptic mystery, to its closing moments, the film dances nimbly above the clouds, proving that fantasy is often the best genre for exploring something real and universal.
The titular Chuck, played capably by Marvel stalwart Tom Hiddleston, starts as an enigma and becomes a universal avatar of a sort, while still retaining his specificity and vibrancy. On the other side of the divide stands Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Marty Anderson. In him we live out our worst fears of what may come next if and when the planet reaches its endgame. We’re told two different tragic stories and, even though they stand in opposition to each other in a way, they both still feel meaningful and appropriately earnest. The film never winks or blushes. There are moments of humor and joy, certainly, but they never come at the expense of gravity. It’s an affecting portrait of what it means to be human and live in community. — Sam Williams (2025)
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