The 2025 fantasy drama film, The Life of Chuck, feels like an amazingly fresh work, both due to Mike Flanagan’s commendable adaptation skills, and also due to Stephen King’s unique perspective in the original short story that the film is adapted from. Divided into three separate acts, the film’s plot deals with a teacher’s ordeal as the world is evidently being destroyed, a sudden but significant event in the life of an accountant, and the childhood experiences of the protagonist, Charles ‘Chuck’ Krantz, which shaped his entire life. But the narrative style of presenting the three acts in reverse chronology fascinatingly holds off the right information for the right time, making The Life of Chuck a thoroughly enjoyable and heartwarmingly poignant watch.
Spoiler Alert
What is the film about?
The Life of Chuck begins inside a middle school classroom, with a student reading an excerpt from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, while the teacher, Marty Anderson, is momentarily distracted by the noise of fire trucks and police vans rushing on the main street outside. Marty also notices the other students checking their phones in the middle of class, and as he admonishingly asks what is so interesting for them to ignore class so openly, he is given an unexpected reply. The girls had just read news of a huge earthquake having completely destroyed parts of California, with a massive chunk of land from Santa Barbara and Fresno having fallen into the ocean. What is even more concerning is the girl’s use of the word ‘another’ at the beginning of the sentence, meaning that similar earthquakes have already rocked many parts of the United States already.
While the news of the earthquake makes Marty feel distraught, it is really not a one-off incident or natural disaster, for the world is truly coming to an end in the most brutal and violent nature. Numerous natural disasters have destroyed many places all over the world, killing and displacing millions of humans, while wars continue to kill millions more, along with causing large-scale destruction. There is a global internet outage soon after, followed by cellular connections going off the grid as well, meaning that humans are unable to keep in touch with the news as well. While most believe that it is the Earth’s aggressive revenge against the complete mess that human beings have created that is causing the repeated natural disasters, a few claim it to be an incident that was going to happen anyway in the grander scheme of the unknown universe.
Amidst all this panic and chaos, both due to natural disasters and the total breakdown of human society, none of the students, or their parents, are all that interested in academic progress, and so Marty Anderson cannot concentrate on his professional duties either. Knowing that he will die when the world ends in a couple of weeks, if not sooner, Marty expresses his desire to get back together with his ex-wife, Felicia Gordon, and he gives her a visit at a crucial time, after there is a global and permanent power outage, and when even stars begin to go out in the night sky. But both Marty and Felicia, along with every other person that they speak with about the matter, are confused about one very odd matter—radio programs, street signs, and every other form of public message portal are filled with a single advertisement, which congratulates someone named Chuck for their great 39 years, seemingly of service at some office. Strangely enough, nobody in the city seems to know who Chuck is or what he did to deserve such a rousing farewell, and yet these ads keep appearing all over the place, even after the power outage.
What is the chronological order of the film’s plot?
As The Life of Chuck is presented in reverse chronological order, the opening segment of the film, titled Thanks Chuck, is actually the last bit of the story. The middle part, or act two, Buskers Forever, is shorter, content-wise. Act three, I Contain Multitudes, is surely the most straightforward of the lot, or at least it appears so, as it tells the story of the protagonist’s childhood. If laid out in simple terms, it is the story of Charles ‘Chuck’ Krantz, whose life is presented before our eyes, starting from his childhood and ending with his untimely death at the mere age of 39 from a brain tumor.
When he was about just five or six years old, Chuck had lost both his parents to a horrible car crash, along with the younger sister he had already named Alyssa, and whose birth he had been awaiting with great enthusiasm. The parents had gone out for a dinner date, possibly for the last time before Chuck’s mother was supposed to give birth to her second child, but the fateful accident changed his life forever. Young Chuck had been left with his grandparents, Albie and Sarah, for the night, and then for his entire life, and he grew up with the grief of never getting to know his parents very well. As a child, he developed a tremendous interest in dancing because of his grandmother, Sarah, who would often break into a dance with the boy inside the kitchen, while Albie mostly remained restrained and busy with his love for mathematics and his dependence on alcohol after his son’s tragic passing.
But when Sarah passed away too, quite suddenly from a heart attack at a grocery store, Chuck learned to live with the grief of this loss as well, and he found great solace in dance, as he now pursued it as a serious passion in school by joining the ‘Twisters and Spinners’ dance class. He enjoyed spending time at the class the most, both because of dance and also because of his budding romantic feelings for his classmate, Cat McCoy. Before one of the biggest extracurricular events at the school, Albie advised Chuck to stop wasting his time trying to pursue dance and instead focus on his skills in mathematics. Although Chuck did get over his initial inhibitions and danced his heart out on that night at the event, he eventually replaced his passion with mathematics and grew up to become an accountant.
Despite building a successful life as an accountant and having his own family, Chuck could never forget the feeling of sheer joy he would experience while dancing, as is made evident from the second act. Therefore, when he ran into a busking drummer on the streets while walking to a meeting at a bank, the adult and more restrained Chuck could not help but break into a dance, becoming the center of attention of every passerby, but not caring about how he was perceived. He was joined by another stranger woman on the street, Janice Halliday, who too had been looking for just such a chance to dance her heart out and express herself through her moves.
It was during this very dance that Chuck felt a certain headache and possible dizziness, which he brushed off at the time. However, these symptoms were later diagnosed to be caused by a tumor in his brain, which could not be treated. Thus, at the mere age of 39, Chuck was on his deathbed, losing all his senses one by one, and comforted as much as possible by his beloved wife, Ginny, and their teenage son, Brian. Despite all the treatment and support, Chuck’s body ultimately gave way, and his short but significant life came to an end.
What is the reason behind the destruction of the world?
In reality, The Life of Chuck is entirely about what the title says, i.e., the life and eventual death of the protagonist, which is a bit difficult to grasp initially, because of the intentionally confusing nature of the first act. In essence, the three acts present the most significant moments in Chuck’s life, which go on to shape the course of his personal and professional lives. Losing his parents as a child gave him the somberness that is usually missing in children of his age, but the absence was more or less filled in by the love and care of his grandparents. Sarah’s own love for dancing passed on to Chuck beautifully, and he found dance to be the most efficient way of expression, even though life had other plans.
Albie’s insistence that the boy not take dancing too seriously and instead focus on mathematics and accounting was a major turning point, as the boy stuck to this advice and made it his profession later in life. One of the most significant moments that we witness is Chuck starting to dance on the street in the second act, which symbolizes him letting go of his inhibitions and expressing himself through dance for the last time, although he does not know about this finality. He meets Janice Halliday, who herself is going through a bad and unexpected breakup and is therefore looking for an opportunity to dance her heart out, although she plans on doing so alone.
Janice is like the exact replacement of Sarah, obviously momentarily, in Chuck’s life, as he notices the ease and eagerness to dance in her just like he used to in his beloved grandmother. This is also why Chuck calls Janice “sister,” without having any reason to do so, as Sarah would call him “brother” during their dancing sessions, and there would be an almost sibling-like relation between them at these moments. But the protagonist also falls sick for the first time during, or slightly after, this dance and is on his deathbed in the third act, which initially seems to be about the destruction of the world, with the death of Chuck appearing like a footnote.
But in reality, everything that we witness in the third act is actually taking place inside Chuck’s consciousness and his mind, which is why the destruction of the world coincides with his own death. None of the characters we follow, like Marty, Felicia, and Sam Yarborough, exist in that reality, but we see them as characters inside Chuck’s mind, dealing with the horrific effects of the apocalypse, since his mind, which is their home, is itself collapsing and dying. The natural disasters and wars all result in one thing—the destruction of human lives, along with landmasses, and importantly, geographical locations crumbling and falling apart. This is symbolic of Chuck’s knowledge, understanding, and perception of the world and of humanity getting destroyed and ceasing to exist because of his illness and the end to his life, which is very close by. Thus, when all the heart monitors at Felicia’s clinic beat at a certain rhythm, without there being any patient there, they beat at the same rate as Chuck’s heartbeat on his deathbed, making it evident that the world seen in act three is a living embodiment of his consciousness.
In a sense, The Life of Chuck can also be looked at as a symbolic representation of a human mind suffering from a deadly brain tumor, although how true this representation is can be questioned. The sudden emergence of the advertisements thanking and congratulating Chuck for his great 39 years, which confuse Marty and Felicia, are actually visual representations of the effect of Ginny’s supportive messages to her husband. While Chuck’s son, Brian, breaks down thinking about how his father could only live for 39 years, Ginny stresses the fact that these 39 years were extremely beautiful and worth living, calming Chuck with the assurance that he had really made the most of his life and it had been one worth looking back at. Although Chuck obviously does not react to these messages in reality, as he lies unconscious and dying, they do have an effect on his mind, symbolized by advertisements lighting up TV screens, radio programs, hoardings on the roads, and even simply the walls, even when there is no electricity. Thus, the stars going out one by one and the night sky going completely dark right when Marty confesses his love for Felicia suggest the final death of Chuck, which ends act three of the film.
Is there a time loop in the film?
At first glance, there seems to be a time loop at play in the plot of The Life of Chuck, as certain figures and elements keep appearing over and over in all three acts, and especially without any change or signs of aging. Marty and Sam Yarborough look the same in the first and third acts, while certain figures, like a girl on rollerblades and the doctor colleague of Felicia, appear in the second and third acts, years apart, but they also look the same. The reason for this is not a time loop but the concept that Chuck met or noticed these characters at some point of his life, and they appear in the third act as living and breathing humans inside his consciousness, even though he was never really acquainted with them.
Marty was a teacher at Chuck’s school when the boy was young, and although Chuck was never in Marty’s class, the latter had complimented the boy’s dancing skills on the night of the event. Therefore, the memory of Marty stuck around in Chuck’s consciousness, and he eventually became a main character in the third act. Similarly, Chuck had met Sam when the latter oversaw Albie’s funeral, and so he looks just the same in the third act. The girl on the rollerblades and the man busily sipping coffee outside a café later returned in the dreamlike episode inside Chuck’s mind, with the girl having a conversation with Marty and the man being Felicia’s only colleague at the clinic. It is also because of the fact that Chuck was not directly acquainted with any of them that these characters cannot identify who Chuck is and are quite suspicious when his face starts to crop up all over the city. In this sense, too, the film can be seen as a symbolic representation of a mind afflicted by a brain tumor, as the most important and crucial figures in one’s life can no longer be remembered, while the less significant side characters, or even people only seen once or twice, inhabit the consciousness.
Is the cupola of Albie and Sarah’s house really haunted?
The only supernatural element in the film seems to be the supposedly haunted cupola in the house of Chuck’s grandparents, which Albie had kept locked up after he had seemingly seen the deaths of certain people in the neighborhood before they actually took place. Ultimately, when Chuck opens up the cupola after his grandfather’s death, he sees an image, or apparition, of his own self lying on his deathbed. To be able to literally see, or maybe envision, deaths before they take place seems to be a supernatural ability that exists in the men of the Krantz family, and it has been passed down to Chuck as well. However, this ability is also tied to the very physical space of the cupola in the house, as the men cannot see future deaths from anywhere else, and this might possibly be suggestive of the strong tie between the family and their generational home.
But the takeaway from The Life of Chuck is young Chuck’s stern decision to not be deterred from having a good life even after seeing his own death and knowing that he will have a comparatively shorter life than usual. He is inspired to do so by Walt Whitman’s poem, Song of Myself, which is indeed an inspiration for both King’s short story and the film as well. The particular words in the poem, I Contain Multitudes, become the mantra for this film and also for its protagonist, Chuck, who lives on with the idea and perspective that there is a whole living and breathing universe inside his own consciousness that is expanded with every second of his life. Therefore, the incidents from act three are a literal (and visual) representation of this very idea.
The cupola does seem to have been a haunted place, and the only reason Albie was so strict against letting his grandson enter the room was because he sensed that the boy would be able to see his own death as well. Albie started believing so even more determinedly after seeing the vision of his own death. Ultimately, Chuck turns out to be a character strong enough to still make every day of his life count and enjoy it to its fullest, despite having always known, since his teenage years, that he would die at the mere age of 39. The memory of the couple also becomes a relatively insignificant detail in Chuck’s mind, which is why the same locked-up room is seen in Marty’s house as a background detail not worth harping on.
