Tom Hiddleston in Mike Flanagan movie

There’s no doubt that current scare guru Mike Flanagan has a soft spot for Stephen King, as he successfully adapted Gerrard’s game and sleep doctor Suitable for large screens. But his latest foray into King flips the genre on its head Chuck’s lifewould look weird if it were less than ideal.

This quirky novella appears in King’s 2020 series, unfolding in reverse chronological order and full of apocalyptic hope if bleeding. Flanagan received an advance copy at the start of the coronavirus lockdown and was deeply moved by its underlying message of learning to seize precious moments in the face of adversity.

However, while the resulting feature had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, with the author in attendance, it delivered an exciting result, but it came at the expense of its initially darkly interesting premise, which as As the story progresses, this premise becomes more diluted and unstable. The end result features unexpected developments, such as a dancing Tom Hiddleston and Mark Hamill as Jewish Zaid (Grandpa), and Flanagan’s rabid fan base may prefer to wait for his planned performance The Exorcist Franchise.

The film’s existential third act finds the world mired in a dystopian morass of natural and man-made disasters—including a devastating 9.1 magnitude earthquake in California that caused the state to “pee like old wallpaper,” wildfires spreading across Ohio, and Europe’s Floods and volcanoes in Germany, not to mention unstable internet, threaten to disappear permanently at any time.

A stoic teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his ex-wife, a frazzled nurse (Karen Gillan), do their best to cope with rapidly approaching doom. The couple is also trying to make sense of all the mysterious “Thanks Chuck!” billboards, signs and TV spots everywhere featuring the suave face of Charles Krantz (Hiddleston) congratulating him on his life. 39 great years.

Flanagan creates an effective sense of horror-cloaked weirdness here, which, coupled with the irony of Wes Anderson’s work that never goes out of place, sets the stage for a well-earned breather at the end. Flashing back in time, the second act reveals the mysterious Chuck Krantz as a bank employee who, in the words of narrator Nick Offerman, “wears accounting armor,” but He plays like Christopher Walken in the iconic Arms. Pocket Queen’s drumbeats, a choreographed dance sequence.

Hiddleston gave it his all in a match that, despite its seeming anachronism, couldn’t help but be mesmerizing.

Then, alas, we get into a longer first act that presents Kranz’s backstory in a decidedly Spielbergian frame: his youth (Jacob Tremblay) was led by his Raised by his grandparents (Mia Sara and Hamill, an excellent Richard Dreyfuss), he discovers his love for dance and is determined to find out why the cupola of their Victorian home has a door There is a padlock on it.

By all accounts, it is the weakest of the three acts. The more that is revealed, the less special that remains. Flanagan, as seen in his Netflix series Hill House is Haunted and midnight massis good at creating an unsettling mood and atmosphere throughout every episode. Here, the tonal connective tissue is lacking, Chuck’s life Perhaps the upbeat, life-embracing effect one might have hoped for is still left, but it ultimately proves to be a short-lived effect—as fleeting as the ghosts that often appear in Flanagan’s more powerful ghost stories.