The Life Of Chuck (2025)

Based on a short story by Stephen King, The Life Of Chuck is adapted into screenplay form and directed by Mike Flanagan. For those expecting horror, however, you should be warned. As made clear by the marketing, this is actually one of the non-horror treats from King, and Flanagan has taken the opportunity to revel in an onscreen world full of optimism and, well, love.

Things work backwards, chronologically, but the main thing to know is that, as the title suggests, this is all about Charles 'Chuck' Franz (played at various points in his life by Cody Flanagan, Benjamin Pajak, Jacob Tremblay, and Tom Hiddleston). Chuck grew up with his grandparents (played by Mia Sara and Mark Hamill), likes dancing, and eventually gets used to the comforting idea that we each contain multitudes. We are the sum of everyone and everything we've ever experienced, even if it can seem as if we haven't done very much with our lives.

It's hard to hate The Life Of Chuck, and it could be argued that this is the kind of fantastical escapism that people need right now (considering the state of things here in 2025 . . . note to any time travellers reading this, SEND HELP). I was surprised to not really love it though. The first act leads up to an obvious enough reveal, even for those who haven't read the source material, and it was a mistake to try to play things off like a big mystery.

Narration from Nick Offerman helps a lot, and his voice is as wonderful as ever, but the rest of the cast is quite a mixed bag, aside from everyone playing Chuck (standouts being Pajak and Hiddleston). Chiwetel Ejiofor is wonderful as a teacher, Marty Anderson, but Karen Gillan isn't so good as his ex-wife, a nurse named Felicia Gordon. Mia Sara is lovely as the grandmother, Hamill overdoes things slightly as grandpa. Then you have many others who are just sorely underused, including Rahul Kohli, Matthew Lillard, and Annalise Basso. There's time for some superb drumming from The Pocket Queen AKA Taylor Gordon though, and Trinity Jo-Li Bliss is a winning presence to convincingly motivate our lead to keep enjoying his talent for dance.

One big set-piece at the halfway point is what you're ultimately left with here. The messaging of the movie is very good, but it's a fortune cookie homily that is somehow paradoxically given too much of the screentime and yet not enough of it. That one set-piece ties everything together so beautifully that it still works though, and thinking of that moment should make most viewers smile and appreciate the beauty and connections of life. It's just not quite enough. Reminding us that we contain multitudes should be done with much more of an emphasis on the multitudes. The Life Of Chuck tries to tell be grandiose and intimate at the same time, which leads to it feeling caught in between the two, and not being as successful in either approach as it could have been if Flanagan had figured out another way to present the material.

I enjoyed this while it was on. I would probably rewatch it. I didn't love it though, although it seems to have worked much better for a lot of other film fans. Maybe it will grow on me whenever I do end up giving it a rewatch.

6/10

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Shudder Saturday: Ladyworld (2018)

I was really hoping to start 2022 with a great movie. Well that didn't work out. Nope, not at all.

Although it sometimes depends on the mood I am in, I am always up for a horror or drama that tries to do something a bit different. I am especially keen to try and avoid pigeonholing movies into any one genre, something that saves me from the anger and disappointment I see people experience when something doesn't go along with certain standards that they themselves have imposed upon it. 

That's my way of saying that I was open to the idea of Ladyworld. I read the brief plot summary - a number of teenage girls become trapped after some mystery act of nature, they then start to unravel and turn on one another as their resources dwindle - and I figured that I might enjoy it. It may fit in some horror elements, it may just be a drama, it had the potential to showcase some great young actors and be a bit different from hundreds of other horror movies I have seen.

Sadly, the biggest difference this movie has from many other movies is how absolutely terrible it is. I ended 2021/started 2022 with one of the worst movies I saw/will see that year, which really isn't how I wanted things to go.

I'm going to blame director Amanda Kramer, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Benjamin Shearn (although it feels like a film with a lot of improvisation between people who don't have enough experience in improv). At the most basic level, this is a gender-flipped riff on Lord Of The Flies, bringing the female experience to the material, but it does absolutely nothing of worth with the premise. Characters aren't developed well, dialogue is painfully bad at times, and the most interesting element, a potential male threat in their midst who attacks when individuals are away from the group, is so badly mishandled that it is too often forgotten while the young women go back to arguing with one another (which may well be a point being made, but it's still not one that is well done).

The cast generally don't seem up to the task of carrying the movie, with three of the main players providing varying degrees of irritation. Ariela Barer, Annalise Basso, and Ryan Simpkins are left out to dry by Kramer, who I suspect could have achieved much better results if she'd managed to create a more focused storyline. Maya Hawke and Tatsumi Romano barely manage to rise above the material, but they do enough to warrant being mentioned here as the only two positives I can think of.

As for the ear-damaging score from Callie Ryan, obviously crafted to create an atmosphere of growing tension, insanity, and a sense of inescapable confinement, I would have much preferred to watch the film with that bizzare "pen pineapple apple pen" song from a few years ago playing alongside the visuals.

Not even visually interesting enough to make it worth your time, there's almost nothing here to help any viewer want to watch the whole thing. A mess, and one that obviously thinks it is being artistically impressive and thought-provoking. I won't be rushing to seek out anything else made by Kramer.

2/10

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Slender Man (2018)

I've said it before, as have many other people, and I will say it again. The worst thing that a movie can do is to leave you feeling absolutely nothing. The ones that just exist, you watch them, you wonder what else you could have done during that time, and you hope to never have to watch them again. Slender Man is one of those movies. I can't give it the lowest possible rating, mainly due to the fact that it has a degree of technical competence and acting ability that the worst films end up lacking, but I don't want anyone thinking that this comes even close to being any good.

The very basic plot sees a group of friends discussing the modern urban legend that is the Slender Man and then working together to summon him, for no other reason than shits and giggles (this is no Candyman). Their plan works, they start to disappear one by one, and it's then a race to figure out how to get him to go away and leave them alone.

As far as I can tell, the Slender Man was created in stories on the internet about a decade ago, by someone named Eric Knudsen AKA Victor Surge, and the creation snowballed and grew into something impressively convincing and developed. My own experience with the character happened when I started to dig into the online series, Marble Hornets (look it up on YouTube, it's highly recommended), and I have been aware of his "brand" growing over the years, in videogames, movies, and as the figure at the centre of a number of crimes and media-crafted tales of fear and panic.

His presence, and the way it has developed from those early days, makes this movie all the more disappointing. What we have here is a bland, safe, mess of a film that tries to make use of the character without ever capturing the real sense of creepiness you can find in most of the tales.

The cast all do what is asked of them, without being memorable or interesting. Joey King, Julia Goldani Telles, Jaz Sinclair, and Annalise Basso are the four main girls involved, Taylor Richardson is a younger fifth character who may get dragged into proceedings, and Alex Fitzalan plays one of the few male characters, and is so redundant that he may as well not be onscreen at all. Nobody stinks. They just can't work well enough to make up for the drab, familiar, aesthetic that is used for the nightmare imagery and scares.

Director Sylvain White has spent the past decade doing mostly TV work (his last feature was The Losers) and this doesn't look likely to lead to an increase in demand for him to try creating more cinematic outings. Although the script by David Birke is about as middling and horribly predictable as you can get, White does nothing to help, instead content to work with imagery and scene construction that feels as if it could have easily been cut and pasted from dozens of other teen horror movies from the past decade.

Do yourself a favour, skip this movie and instead spend 90 minutes browsing the internet for the early tales and videos that brought the Slender Man to the attention of the masses. You'll find a lot of that stuff much scarier.

3/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.

Netflix And Chill: Ouija: Origin Of Evil (2016)

I had heard that this prequel to Ouija was actually quite a good horror movie but I just couldn't bring myself to give it a watch before now. Yes, it was directed by Mike Flanagan, who also co-wrote the script with Jeff Howard, but it was a prequel to Ouija, which was just crap. I should have had faith, in both the people who advised me that I would enjoy this film and the talent of Flanagan (who hasn't done anything yet that I have really disliked).

Set in the 1960s, this is the tale of a widow (Lina Zander, played by Annalise Basso) and her two daughters (Alice, played by Elizabeth Reaser, and Doris, played by Lulu Wilson). Lina offers readings to people in order to make money, helped by her daughters (who hide away and help to create the effects that show contact has been made with the spirit world), and it looks like they can add to the whole performance when they find an old Ouija board. Unfortunately, they break a number of the golden rules, which lets an evil force into their lives, communicating to everyone through young Doris.

There are a number of jump scares here, and a number of absolutely predictable moments (one or two repeated from the first film), but Flanagan also knows how to just creep viewers out. Once the opening act of the movie is done, with characters established and the Ouija board made use of, things start to get freaky very quickly. And the scares are all the better because of being grounded in a film that feels close enough to something from at least a few decades ago. This may not be a 100% accurate period film but there are enough touches, from the opening credits to the appearance of the film (even including added "cigarette burns" for extra authenticity), to make it feel like something you would have caught in the early days of VHS.

The performances are all excellent, with Basso, Reaser, and Wilson wonderful in their individual turns and also as a strained family unit, and there's a fine supporting turn from Henry Thomas, playing a priest/teacher who helps the family figure out just how bad things are for them. Parker Mack may be the least of the central cast members, playing the young man, Mikey, who is forging a relationship with Alice, but he is also good in his role.

A couple of visual tricks may be overdone, although the white-eyed and gaping-mouthed look never stops being scary to me, and there's obviously the fact that those who watched the first film will know how things should play out, but none of that stops Ouija: Origin Of Evil being a surprisingly brilliant mainstream horror that manages to hit the beats that it has to while also providing a few hair-raising surprises along the way.

Although you can watch this, and enjoy it, by itself, I still grudgingly encourage others to watch the first film first, if only to give you more appreciation when you then see how Flanagan and Howard tied things together here.

8/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.