Aarcflick

 Midway through its runtime, Mike Flanagan's "Life of Chuck" introduces a kind of mantra, via a line of dialogue taken from Stephen King's short story of the same name: "Would answers make a good thing better?" The implication is a resounding "No," which fits with the "Haunting of Bly Manor" creator's esoteric (and esoterically structured) drama about life, death, and cosmic mysteries. However, it also ends up making this point completely wrong, oscillating between a crass literalism that robs the film of its greatest euphoric power. Like King's story—one of four novellas collected in the book "If It Bleeds"—"Life of Chuck" is divided into three acts played in reverse, each narrated by Nick Offerman. It opens with the "Third Act," which chronicles the crumbling world from the perspective of a small American town. The internet has been down for months and is about to go dark, along with the television ...