Stephen King has written a lot of books and there is a long list of adaptations from those books. There have been at least 40 films, based on something King wrote. Mike Flanagan is a filmmaker who mostly works in the horror genre. Flanagan directed Gerald's Game (2017) and Doctor Sleep (2019), which were also King adaptations. Flanagan seems to be making a career out of adapting King's works because he has an upcoming TV series that will be a remake of Carrie (1976), the first King adaptation, but this is Flanagan taking from a short story that King wrote in his collection, If It Bleeds (2020). One would expect it to have some horror or supernatural elements, which most of King's works possess. One could argue that those elements are here in very small doses. However, this film feels like it's more in the vein of Stand By Me (1989) or The Shawshank Redemption (1994). Both of which were more moving and sentimental, dramatic stories rather than tales meant to scare or even thrill.
Tom Hiddleston (The Avengers and Midnight in Paris) stars as Charles Krantz, aka "Chuck," a banker and accountant who is married and has a son. He dresses very well, assuming that he makes good money to afford the finer things. Yet, it doesn't seem as if he's very happy. One day, he's walking through a city square and he passes by a street artist, a young woman playing the drums. He stops and decides to dance to the beat of those drums. He does for a long time, dancing extremely well and drawing a crowd. He eventually gets another woman to join in the dance and shows a lot of skill in various forms of movement. It goes on for a long while, but when it's over, people ask him how he learned to dance as well as he does and why he chose to dance in that moment at all. He doesn't answer or at least he doesn't answer truthfully. The rest of the film is essentially trying to find the true reason of how he learned to dance and why he chose to dance in that moment. However, this is not where the film starts and in fact, it's not until at least a half-hour or so into the film before we even meet Chuck properly.
Chiwetel Ejiofor (Doctor Strange and 12 Years a Slave) co-stars as Marty Anderson, a teacher that works at the school where Chuck attended as a child. Marty never met Chuck. Marty taught a different class than the one Chuck had, but the film actually starts with Marty and almost makes us think that Marty is the main character here. Whatever supernatural or possibly horror elements exist, they mainly exist in this first half-hour where we meet Marty and spend all that time focused on him and his life. Marty used to be married to a nurse named Felicia Gordon, played by Karen Gillan who was in Flanagan's early film Oculus (2013) but who is probably best known for her role in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014).
Both Marty and Felicia become aware that the universe is about to end, which will be the end of all life on Earth. There are various occurrences of disasters, which are destroying large chunks of the planet and killing millions of lives. It's not as if we get huge CGI spectacle. All of this information is conveyed via news footage in a rather dull fashion. Some of these disasters look like the result of climate change, but they also look like the result of something else, which remains unidentified. However, neither Marty nor Felicia seem panicked, at least not overtly. No one we meet in this first section of the film seems panicked or worried. Most seem resigned to the fact that the universe and thus world will end. They mostly just seem depressed or nonplussed. Strangely, Marty and Felicia keep noticing billboards or advertising for a guy named Charles Krantz and they don't know why.
This first section of the film sets up an intriguing mystery of what's happened to the planet. It also sets up some interesting parallels to the actual problem of climate change. None of it really goes anywhere. What we gather is that this first section is simply a metaphor or what could be considered an extended dream sequence, which would have been fine, if it had any connection or deeper meaning to what ultimately becomes the protagonist and the titular character. This is a film about Chuck, yet Marty and Felicia are very, very tangential characters or have no bearing on Chuck's life. It's reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz (1939), which the main thrust of that film turns out to be one big dream and the characters like the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and Cowardly Lion turned out to be people that Dorothy knew from her waking life. These people end up meaning something to her in both her dream and her waking life. Here, Marty and Felicia don't amount to much or influence anything in Chuck's life that's even at all significant. Yes, that's how dreams can work. Often, something random and inconsequential can take center stage in the unconscious, but it feels unsatisfying in what's supposed to be a dramatic narrative.
Benjamin Pajak, in his feature debut, co-stars as 11-year-old Chuck. He simply is a very cute kid who loses his parents at age 7 and has his grandparents raise him. We see him spend time with his grandma or "bubbie" and his grandpa or "zaydee." Both inspire Chuck in different ways. His bubbie loves music and his zaydee loves math. We also see him going to school and watcg him discovering his love of moving and grooving. The film peaks with two dance scenes. The first is with Hiddleston and it's pretty incredible. The second is with Pajak and it's cute, but I wasn't as impressed or as invested.
Nick Offerman (The Last of Us and Parks and Recreation) does the voice-over narration, often as if he's reading straight from King's prose. What helps to make the Hiddleston dance better than the Pajak dance is Offerman's narration giving us insight into Hiddleston's dance partners and in particular the busker providing the live drum music to which Hiddleston grooves. The Pajak dance is simply him dancing to pre-recorded music that isn't live. Yet, seeing the live reaction shots of the busker named Taylor, played by Taylor Gordon, were what sold the power of that Hiddleston dance moment, as being something more than a dance but almost spontaneous, dynamic energy where we felt a collaboration between musician and dancer.
Finally, the film introduces another mystery in the third segment, which introduces Pajak's version of Chuck. That mystery involves Chuck living with his grandparents as a prepubescent boy and being told that he can't go into the attic of his grandparents' house. The attic is called a "cupola." Chuck is obviously curious as to why and as to what is up there. At one point, Chuck tries to go into the cupola but he's stopped by his bubbie, aka Albie Krantz, played by Mark Hamill who was in Flanagan's The Fall of the House of Usher (2023) but who is obviously best known from Star Wars (1977). When Albie stares into the cupola, he's frightened after seeing something terrifying.
The film eventually resolves the issue of what Albie saw when he looked into the cupola, and it could seem terrifying, but the film doesn't really play into how it would scare the audience, as opposed to it only scaring Albie. When it is revealed what Albie saw, it's in a moment that's actually meant to be life-affirming, even if what he saw might in fact be the opposite. Unfortunately, the life-affirming message falls rather flat because it's supposed to affirm for Chuck that he should live his life to the fullest or do what he loves, which is dancing. Yet, we know that as an adult, he never pursued dancing, except in that one moment with Taylor, the busker. Otherwise, what was the point of the whole cupola mystery?
Maybe the point is that Chuck was basically given a premonition and he promised to live life to the fullest, but yet he never really did. Yet, I can't really make that argument because the film doesn't really dive deep into what Chuck's life looks like. We're told what his job is, but we never actually see him doing it. We're told he has a wife and child, but we never get a full sense of his family dynamic or how he is with them. His wife is played by Q'orianka Kilcher (The New World) and it's a shame that she's basically side-lined.
Rated R for language.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 51 mins.
In theaters.