Stephen King and writer-director Mike Flanagan, of Netflix hits such as Midnight Mass and The Haunting of Hill House, are an ideal match. Both possess monstrous imaginations and pure hearts, tending towards horror with an ability to imagine a better future. Flanagan’s touched many of the greats – Shirley Jackson, Henry James, Edgar Allan Poe – in his horror series. But when he collides with King, in Gerald’s Game (2017), The Shining sequel Doctor Sleep (2019), and, now, The Life of Chuck, it’s like watching two people speak with the same voice.
The Life of Chuck is reverentially faithful to King’s novella, published in his 2020 collection If It Bleeds. And, admittedly, those particularly infatuated by either his or Flanagan’s work will likely find themselves richly rewarded by the film. But it also loses out on one of the most thrilling aspects of adaptation – the sense of one artist wrestling with another’s ideas, trying to make sense of them in their own language and, in turn, sparking a kind of combative electricity.
