MULTITUDES, BIG AND SMALL

By Joe Cooper

June 2025

Mike Flanagan adapts a Stephen King novella about the end, and what to do while waiting for it.

What

time is it right now? Is the end near, or not? Are we years or decades away from a perfect storm of environmental collapse and global war? Do we have another few millennia ahead of us yet to go? Or is the U.S. just another Egypt, Rome, Ottoman or Britain, and we’re simply at the beginning of imperial transition? 

With each day bringing new crises – autocrats, hurricanes, genocides, plane crashes, political and school shootings – it is tempting to feed the morbid curiosity about our demise, which is simply part of being alive. But students of history will remember that for many, the end already came and went. Any of the millions of residents of villages destroyed by the Romans, or Genghis Khan. The Jews, in Egypt, and later Europe. The Mayans and Aztecs. Indigenous Americans. Armenians. Chinese near the Yangtze River. Japanese in Hiroshima. Gazans. Sudanese. Haitians. 

While the world did not end holistically in these examples, it ended for these groups of people. We all know our time is limited, and that one day, it will run out. But, as Mike Flanagan’s new film tells us: “The waiting is the hard part.”

Stephen King, who is indisputably one of our era’s finest authors, has published over 65 novels and novellas, with an additional 200 short stories to boot. Initially known for elevating horror to new heights, with legendary novels like The Shining (1977) and It (1986), he also created incredible and longlasting non-horror stories, like The Shawshank Redemption (1982) and The Green Mile (1996), many of which have been turned into films. 

Part of King’s 2020 story collection, If It Bleeds, the new personal drama The Life of Chuck delves into these themes using a simple three act structure that runs in reverse. From the billboards, banners and signs that enigmatically appear in the first act, the titular Chuck seems to be some kind of accountant. But the world is close to ending, with environmental and political crises consuming the globe. 

As Flanagan told the hosts of the King fan podcast Kingcast, when he told King it was Chuck he wanted to make into a film, King apparently said, “How are you going to do that?”

The

film begins in our modern day, and things aren’t great. Earthquakes in California are peeling it off into the ocean. A sinkhole in the midwest has swallowed millions. The “four-day war” between India and Pakistan ravaged each country. The list goes on, with most examples familiar to us, foretold either by science or current events. But the most crushing crisis of all to the citizens of the film’s small town might be the loss of the internet. 

Chiwotel Ejiofor takes the first baton (in Act Three, first up), in a performance that embodies everything we have come to know and love from him: his eyes, radiant pools of compassion, his persona chock full of patience, and his muted manner every bit believable. He is Marty, an English teacher, attempting to convey the genius of Walt Whitman to a classroom of students otherwise glued to their phones. During a humorous parent-teacher conference montage, we are treated to a David Dastmalchian cameo (Prisoners from 2013, Late Night with the Devil from 2023), who shares his exasperation that even Pornhub is down. “Fuckin’ Porn hub,” he laments. 

Marty spends the evening talking to his ex-wife on the phone, a nurse who says “humor me,” in an effort to return to the comfort of their old relationship. Then the TV networks go out. Then the radio. And all the while, print and digital images of Chuck, smiling with a coffee mug, with a banner reading “Thanks Chuck!” appear without explanation. 

The

Life of Chuck is many things: a film adaptation of a novel by a modern master; an apocalyptic poem; a reverse narrative experiment; and a home for wonderful cameos. In addition to Dastmalchain, we have Matthew Lillard, forever renting space in our heads from his zany teenage turn in Scream (1996), who delivers a goofy but endearing performance as a maintenance worker marveling at the Earth’s destruction. Marty’s ex is played refreshingly by Karen Gillan, finally free of the blue makeup and cyborg trappings of her Nebula character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Nick Offerman, from many cultural touchstones, but few as lovingly bizarre as his 45-minute holiday yule log video, serves as our narrator, guiding us through each act with his signature wry wit and humble steadfastness. 

The first time we see Chuck, played simply by Tom Hiddleston, known as much for his cheeky God of Mischief, Loki (also from the MCU), as for genre gems like Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) and Crimson Peak (2015), he is wasting away on a hospital bed, at the tail end of a cancer diagnosis. His wife and son are bedside, offering quiet and final affirmations. Meanwhile, Marty seeks to reconnect with Felicia, whom he tells about the cosmic calendar, a 12-month-scaled approximation of the history of the Milky Way and our very brief place in it at the very end of December. 

We’ve all imagined what the end of the world could look like. Franklin J Schaffner implied a nuclear end in The Planet of the Apes (1968). James Cameran followed suit, with a bomb on LA rendered horrifically in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). Both Deep Impact (1998) and Don’t Look Up (2021) suggest we go the way of the dinosaurs, via comets. Bro buddies Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg imagined colossal demons from the deep in This is the End (2013).

But this end arrives much more quietly, as T.S. Eliot’s famous poem, “The Hollow Men” is referenced in the film – “not with a bang but a whimper.” Flanagan takes further cinematic inspiration from the poem via the line “In this valley of dying stars” inspiring the quietest apocalyptic set piece you’ll see this summer. Unlike the violently destructive ends of other films, it’s this one, with the final ticks of “the great clock of the universe” spent in a backyard holding Ejiofor’s hand; I thought, this is the one I’d want. 

“The

Life of Chuck” won’t work for everyone. Some will find it too earnest, its lack of cynicism striking a polar tone compared to the daily deluge of decline and death we see in the news. Many won’t connect with the spontaneous dance set piece of Act Two. And others will join the chorus of criticism against Mark Hamill, who plays Chuck’s Grandpa in Act One (which, naturally, comes third).

Which is a shame, because the minute a street drummer sits down at her set, stationed on the corner of a promenade that looks, I think intentionally, like a back lot, you can’t help but move your feet. She is played fabulously by a drummer named The Pocket Queen, who presents as a trained actor with her confident and entertaining facial work. Here we’re properly introduced to Chuck, who is walking home along the promenade with the requisite suit and briefcase. For some reason he pauses when he passes the drummer, and – begins to dance. 

My dad was a drummer, and as kids, we’d listen to him pound out technically complex rhythms and explosions of percussive sound behind a battery of tom toms, cymbals, and even a gong. To be in the close presence of such a curious, loud, reverberating tradition of music was thrilling, and this is what the film uses to breathe life into the second act. And while it may seem frivolous, random and naive, this drum-and-dance sequence slips off the screens and into our modern day consciousness, its levity and positivity seeking to play a role that becomes rarer and rarer in these spark times: an antidote. 

In the final act, the clock winds back even further, to Chuck’s childhood, in which he faces loss and explores passion in a simple narrative that resembles pleasant small town stage play. Mia Sara, all grown up from her days as Ferris Bueller’s girlfriend, plays his grandmother, though she does not settle into the role as convincingly as Mark Hamill as his warm but crusty grandpa. Not since the late actor Thomas Hill’s turn as the grumbling, intimidating-but-warm book shop keeper in the 80s classic The Neverending Story (1954) have we seen such this combo fine tuned so well. 

Hamill, seeming finally comfortable with his legacy as Luke Skywalker and subsequent VO work in the Star Wars and DC franchises, keeps a hidden key to a mysteriously locked cupola (like a turret) at the top of their suburban home. He admonishes Chuck never to go in, with no explanation. Here we see King’s ability to use a moderate amount of magic realism to expand the gills of the story and take needed breaks from the open sentimentality of the story. Like any Macguffin, its mystery acts like a fish hook, keeping us attuned to what might be inside; but the story and the emotional evocations are so clear, simple and magnetic, I stopped caring what was behind the cupola door. 

In this final act, Chuck is played charmingly by Benjamin Pajak and Jacob Trembly, prompting viewers to reflect on childhood and its early dreams. In one quiet scene, a small Chuck steps outside and looks up at the stars, his wonder as big as it will ever be. 

Later, he utters a declaration about how to live his life, “until it runs out.” This kind of phrasing carries a quiet inevitability, and moves us forward along the sequence of existential dread: the world will eventually end, so we should do something with the time we have. In  Michel Gondry’s indie masterpiece Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2003), Kate Winslet’s Clementine and James Carey’s Joel have their memories erased to forget their painful breakup. In their final memory together, as the brain eraser is stripping away the beachfront house they’re in, Clementine says, “This is it Joel. It’s gonna be gone soon... What should we do?” His response is simple and clear: “Enjoy it.”

Chuck works with simple tools. The production design is bland, and won’t win any awards. The Newton Brothers’ score features a simple theme that uses the first four major notes on a scale. The script uses Walt Whitman’s 1892 poem “Song of Myself” repeatedly, reminding us that we all “contain multitudes.” The three-act structure is spelled out plainly. This may either feel contrived or elegant; viewers’ mileage will vary. 

What is more certain is the reality of combined global anxieties, fears and realities that have either ended the gift of life prematurely for so many, or are plaguing the minds of the rest of us who are still here. The distance and time between horror and safety, between fear and fulfillment, and between languishing and love, as King has shown us for over five decades, is never as far or as long as we think. The waiting may be hard. But maybe the only thing that matters is what we do while we wait.