DRAMA; 1hr 50min
STARRING: Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Annalise Basso, Taylor Gordon, Nick Offerman (narrator)
Name in lights: Hiddleston
The world is ending with a bang in Act III of Gerald’s Game writer-director Mike Flanagan’s drama-in-reverse, based on a 2020 short story by Stephen King. From California to Europe and Asia, the Blue Planet is a box and dice of environmental disasters. Furthermore, the internet is on the fritz and Pornhub has gone for good, unimaginable as that is.
People are coping as best they can. Marty Anderson (Ejiofor), for instance, is still attempting to teach Walt Whitman (I contain multitudes…) to distracted high schoolers. His ex-wife, hospital nurse Felicia Gordon (Gillan), turns up to work “[feeling] more like an undertaker.” Around the time that Marty spots a billboard featuring an image of an anonymous, nerdish man with the caption CHARLES KRANTZ, 39 GREAT YEARS! THANKS, CHUCK!, Felicia hears the same effusive sign-off to Chuck on radio. Who on earth is this milquetoast suit, and why is he taking centre stage as its existence shudders to a full stop?
Act II dips back nine months to introduce the man behind the apocalyptic icon. Accountant Charles Krantz (Hiddleston, nice as pie) is in town for a ho-hum banking conference when he spots Taylor Franck (Gordon) busking with her drum kit on a sunny street. On a galvanising whim, buttoned-up Charles starts to dance like a natural to Taylor’s beat. His duet with a young woman (Basso) he plucks from the watching crowd slips the spark of Fred and Ginger into King and Flanagan’s tale of woe, bathing the retro grace of its folksy setting in a glow of possibility.
Act I is a second nod to Whitman’s multitudes and to the overall theme of a universally personal story. Rounding out Chuck’s 39 years, his childhood delivers the missing pieces of everything that has gone before. This is not the Stephen King we’ve all come to know. He rules the roost as a master of darkness but his celebration of a little guy is luminous.
