Tom Hiddleston plays mild-mannered Charles “Chuck” Krantz, whose death coincides with the end of the world, in the trailer for Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck, which dropped on Thursday.
The teaser early on shows the back of Hiddleston’s head as he plays the titular character of Chuck and walks down a suburban mall promenade. Then, now in a suit and spectacles, we finally see Hiddleston’s face as he nervously stares into the far distance.
“The universe is large, and it contains multitudes, but… it also contains me,” Chuck says in a voice-over to underline the movie’s message about embracing joy in the face of tragedy. The genre-tripping trailer for horror hitmaker Flanagan’s doomsday drama only hints at the end of Chuck’s life with early snippets of an ECG heart line and a ticking clock.
The movie told in reverse order from the end to the beginning also has Jacob Tremblay and Benjamin Pajak in quick cuts in the trailer as they play earlier stages of Chuck’s life. That backstory comes well before the suggestion of an imminent apocalypse that lends a dread-like quality to the trailer for a movie told in reverse chronological order.
The THR review of The Life of Chuck reads: “It comes as no surprise that reigning scare-meister Mike Flanagan has a soft spot for Stephen King, having successfully adapted Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep for the big screen. But his latest stab at King, the genre-warping The Life of Chuck, makes for an oddball if less ideal fit.”
Flanagan’s Stephen King novella adaptation also stars Mark Hamill, Karen Gillan and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Neon will release the movie that won the top audience award at the Toronto Film Festival in June 2025.
