Review: 'The Life of Chuck' is an ambitiously constructed story about the value of a life, but it gets too clever for its own good

The filmmaker Mike Flanagan may be one of the more creative people working in the horror and suspense realms today — and you only need to look at his work with Stephen King’s “Doctor Sleep” or his Netflix miniseries, like “The Haunting of Hill House” or “The Fall of the House of Usher,” to see the genius at work.

So why is the ambitious “The Life of Chuck,” which Flanagan wrote and directed off of a King short story, feel like a cleverly conceived misfire? Maybe it’s because Flanagan holds his secrets so tightly that he never allows the audience the space to enjoy the life-affirming message he’s so eager to express.

Flanagan tells his story in three acts, starting with the third act. In this act, titled “Thanks Chuck,” it’s the present day and the world seems to be collapsing in on itself, with natural disasters everywhere and people losing access to the Internet. The main characters here are Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Felicia (Karen Gillan), ex-spouses who reconnect in the face of the growing chaos. There’s also one weird constant: Messages of thanks to Charles Krantz, or Chuck, for “39 great years.” (Think of the Julia Reagan tribute billboards seen across Utah and other states, but increasingly sinister.)

Then comes Act Two, called “Buskers Forever.” That’s also set in the present day, and starts with Taylor (Taylor Gordon, the drummer known as The Pocket Queen) busking on a summer afternoon, when a guy in a business suit stops and starts dancing to her rhythms. This, we recognize from the previous portion of the film, is Chuck Krantz, played by Tom Hiddleston. Chuck starts dancing with a woman in the crowd (Annalise Basso). Flanagan fills in a lot of character detail here, mostly through an overbearing narrator with the unmistakeable voice of Nick Offerman.

Act One carries the title “I Contain Multitudes,” which means we’ll come back to the Walt Whitman recitation that starts the movie. We also meet young Chuck (played by Cody Flanagan, Benjamin Pajak and Jacob Tremblay at various ages), and some of the many loose ends are tied up, some of them a little too neatly.

Flanagan has assembled quite a troupe of actors through his past works, and many of them — like Gillan, Lumbly and Basso, as well as Mark Hamill, Kate Siegel (who’s married to Flanagan), Samantha Sloyan, Violet McGraw and Heather Langenkamp — give some graceful small performances here. One newcomer to Flanagan’s acting ensemble who’s striking here is Mia Sara, making her first screen appearance in 12 years.

Flanagan has a gift for densely layered narratives that make surprising connections across time and space. It’s a gift that serves him best in his miniseries, where he’s got the time to let the magic unfold. In “The Life of Chuck,” that gift works against him, and the cleverness interferes with the emotional connection. There’s stuff in this movie that should make even the hardest heart weep, but those things get caught up in Flanagan’s intricate mechanism and never have the desired effect.

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‘The Life of Chuck’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, June 13, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language. Running time: 111 minutes.