In a Stephen King story, a Jewish meditation on how to live a rewarding life
In ‘Life of Chuck,’ one man chooses his own destiny despite being haunted by death
Tom Hiddleston stars in The Life of Chuck. Photo by Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for SXSW London
By Olivia Haynie July 8, 2025
This story contains spoilers for the film The Life of Chuck.
Although it’s the product of writer Stephen King and director Mike Flanagan, both best known for their horror work, the film Life of Chuck is a drama devoid of murderous clowns, vampires, and heart-attack-inducing jump scares — though it does feature ghosts.
Based on King’s novella of the same name, with a screenplay adapted by Flanagan, Life of Chuck is a surprisingly simple story about the death and life of Charles “Chuck” Krantz (Tom Hiddleston), told with the supernatural flavors that have permeated the work of both King and Flanagan, best known for Gerald’s Game (also based on a King novel) and The Haunting of Hill House.
The story unfolds in reverse chronological order, opening with “Act 3: Thanks, Chuck!” in the midst of what appears to be the end of the world. California falls into the sea, sinkholes swallow highways, and the internet shuts down for good. Despite this, billboards, skywriters, and TV ads thank Chuck Krantz for an amazing 39 years — 39 years of what is not explained and our main characters have no idea who Chuck even is.
The audience meets Chuck in “Act 2: Buskers Forever,” on a day when, while taking a break from an accounting conference, he finds himself dancing for the first time in years — a hobby he used to love, which we learn about in the final part, “Act 1: I Contain Multitudes,” where Chuck’s life begins.
Chuck’s childhood is plagued by death; a fatal car crash kills his parents and unborn sister. He is adopted by his Jewish grandparents, Bubbe (Mia Sara) and Zadie (Mark Hamill), who live in a Victorian house with a mysterious, padlocked cupola. One night, after he’s had a bit too much to drink, Zadie, babbling somewhat incoherently about Bubbe and neighbors who have passed away, tells Chuck the cupola is filled with ghosts.
Years later, after both his grandparents have passed, Chuck finally ventures into the cupola and sees an image of himself dying on a hospital bed. The cupola, it turns out, is a portal to view individual’s deaths — including one’s own.
The movie, like the story it’s based on, has Jewish elements here and there, with Bubbe’s occasional use of Yiddish and the presence of black yarmulkes and ribbons at the funerals — although the caskets are lacquered wood instead of the traditional plain pine used in Jewish ceremonies. But the real Jewish soul of the film comes in its musings about what it means to face death.
Although I grew up in a Reconstructionist household, my family Haggadah always contained a quote from Rabbi Nachman Breslov, founder of the Breslov Hasidic movement:
Kol ha’olam kulo gesher tzar me’od v’ha’ikar lo l’fached klal
The whole entire world is a very narrow bridge and the main thing is to have no fear at all.
This quote came to mind immediately in Act 2 when our narrator, voiced by Nick Offerman, explains that Chuck’s world has grown narrower than he dreamed it would be. He’s referring to the fact that Chuck has traded in his love for dancing for a more stable life as an accountant (Jewish accountants seem to be a theme in King’s work). However, this day, Chuck begins to show symptoms of the cancer that will eventually kill him. His future is narrowing and the frightening image of his own death that he faced as a teenager is growing closer.
Chuck, unlike any of us (I imagine), sees exactly how he looks in the end, pale and gaunt on a hospital bed. He doesn’t know what is killing him or how old he is — same as the rest of us who don’t have a death-revealing cupola. And, like us, he has to make the choice of what to do knowing that one day — could be tomorrow, or next year, or 50 years from now — our own time to pass on from this world will come.
In his cryptic notes on the cupola, Zadie tells Chuck that “waiting” is the hard part. It’s up to the individual to decide how to spend the time they have left. You can let the knowledge of your own mortality suck you in and send you into a chasm of fear — or you can walk the narrow bridge, push on in life, despite the good and the bad, and cross without fear.
Teenage Chuck resolves that, even though he has viewed his own death, he deserves to have a wonderful life. Aside from that day he dances, the audience never sees how Chuck actually spends his adult years on Earth. But, even though Chuck’s life is the movie’s title, it’s not really the point. The takeaway is to have the determination to cross our own narrow bridges and the knowledge that we, too, deserve wonder.
