The Life of Chuck

A lot of movies barely have a point of view at all. This one is a prism in comparison. It gives viewers what David Lynch called “room to dream.”

It’s a lumpy, eclectic film, one grasping for deep meaning but never quite reaching it. Flanagan’s ambition fails him here, as it sometimes does in his ornately crafted Netflix shows.

Mike Flanagan’s film doesn’t escape the mires of unpersuasive pop psychology.

The Life of Chuck isn’t a movie with answers, but it’s a movie with compassion and understanding, which we can definitely use.

“Would answers make a good thing better?” [The film] ends up proving its point in all the wrong ways, swerving in and out of a boorish literalism that robs the film of its most euphoric power.

The Life of Chuck is a perfect marriage of Mike Flanagan and Stephen King's talents, but not in the way you might expect.

When it comes to "The Life of Chuck" being the most thoughtful, empathetic, and tender film of the year, it just is.


The Life of Chuck brings the Stephen King short story to the screen but the film continues a long-running practice of non-Jewish actors in Jewish roles.

This is a boldly beautiful and haunting film in which every answer about its narrative only raises more questions about the beginning and end of life, as well as everything in between.

The film takes a hard-sell approach to its banal greeting-card-level observations that is so overbearing that it practically leaps off the screen, grabs you by the lapels and screams “Laugh! Cry! Contemplate the joys and mysteries of human existence!”