Mike Flanagan's 'The Life of Chuck' Trailer Seems a Surrealist Fantasy

Netflix doesn't have a singular brand like Disney+; there's no programming throughline other than "if we throw it against the wall and it sticks, we probably make two more seasons!" While this makes marketing nebulous, it does mean the streaming service has accidentally produced several singular talents in various genres. Millie Bobby Brown, for example, is already heading to future dame-hood for her breakout roles, while Bridgerton is creating a whole new generation of British A-listers. Then there's the horror genre, where Netflix has turned writer/director Mike Flanagan into a household name. However, Flanagan has already started moving beyond the "Tudum" with his new feature film The Life of Chuck.

Flanagan's milieu at Netflix was making new horror classics with a recurring stable of actors, not unlike Ryan Murphy over at FX with American Horror Story. His successes include the 2018-2022 run of The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, and The Midnight Club. But even by the early 2020s, Flanagan had started taking a more literary turn; his last project at Netflix was 2023's The Fall of the House of Usher, an adaptation of the Edgar Allen Poe story. Moreover, before his Netflix success, Flanagan's last project was an adaptation of the Stephen King story, Gerald's Game.

So it's actually not that surprising that Flanagan's return to film is another King adaptation, though of a much lesser-known story. The Life of Chuck was only published in the last few years, one of King's older works that just never made it out to the public. It's also not precisely horror? Check out the trailer, and you'll see what I mean.