Principal of a high school, Marty Anderson is intrigued by advertisements on TV, radio or in the streets, thanking a certain Chuck. While disasters and tragedies are multiplying around the world, including in his own city, he conducts his investigation into this mysterious character that no one seems to know, and is getting closer to his former woman, from whom he is divorced …
Even more than that of the actors, it is the names of the director and the writer author of the short story that inspired the film that attracts the look at the poster. Respectively, Mike Flanagan and Stephen King. The first has already delivered two very successful adaptations of the second to the cinema, “Jessie” (2017) and « Doctor Sleep » (2019), as well as several striking series, “The Haunting” (2018-2020) or “The fall of the Usher house” (2023), Visible on Netflix.
A route that allows him to be considered one of the masters of horror on large and small screens. The good person therefore to rub shoulders with Stephen King once again, even if his choice, this time, focused on an atypical text, “the life of Chuck”, a long news being part of the Collection “If it bleeds” (2021 at Albin Michel).
A story full of emotion and compassion
Because no fantastic creatures, living dead or killers in this mini-Roman, nor its transposition to the cinema. And so, no effusions of sudden anxiety or suspense to cut with a knife to wait. Instead, an convoluted and philosophical story, breaking the chronological order, full of emotion and compassion, and a little bit of fantastic, with pretty characters … including the famous Chuck. This does not prevent the film from aligning the memorable sequences, including a dance that will be a date and will surely appeal to lovers of “La Land”.
Speaking about King at the Associated Press agency, Mike Flanagan sums up the situation well: “Many people, because he writes so many things that are so scary, forget the reason why his horror works so well: it is that he is still juxtaposes it with light, love and empathy”.
“Existential fear, sorrow and things are part of human experience, but joy too,” said Stephen King. Because it is its most sensitive part, that exploited in excellent films such as “Stand by Me” (1986), “Les Évadés” (1994) or “La Ligne Verte” (1999), that the author sports here, and which is brilliantly transcribed by Mike Flanagan.
And as we do not change a winning team, the two artists are already collaborating again, on a serial version of the novel “Carrie”, for Prime Video. We can’t wait!
American drama of Mike Flanagan, with Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Mark Hamill … (1h50).
