Would you want to know how you’ll die?

It’s a question you might find yourself asking after watching The Life of Chuck (in theaters now). Based on the Steven King novella of the same name, the film ends with the titular character (played by Tom Hiddleston) walking away from an attic where he may have just seen an apparition of himself at the end of his life. 

The film tells the story of Charles Krantz, a dance-loving accountant who tragically dies from a brain tumor at 39. Chuck’s life unfolds for the audience through three acts, presented in reverse, with the final act telling the story of his childhood. 

In Act III, young Chuck (played by both Benjamin Pajak and Jacob Tremblay) is forbidden from going into his attic by his grandfather, Albie Krantz (Mark Hamill). We learn that in that attic, Albie has seen ghostly apparitions showing the deaths of himself and his loved ones, and he doesn’t want Chuck to be traumatized by similar visions.

But after Albie dies, teenage Chuck can no longer contain his curiosity. When he enters the room, he briefly sees an older version of himself in a hospital bed, hooked up to a monitor. Thanks to the reverse chronological storytelling, we know by this point in the film that young Chuck is indeed witnessing his own demise. But does Chuck let this phantom haunt him into adulthood?  

“Any premonition of death or the end of his life doesn’t scare him or suppress him,” Hiddleston tells Entertainment Weekly. “His choice in that moment is to live as fully as he can, which is the choice we all ought to make all the time. None of us know the day or the date that our lives will end. And if we think about it, we live with that uncertainty every day.” 

The reveal in Act III that Chuck has seen his final moment gives extra weight to earlier portions of the movie – specifically his spontaneous dance on the street in Act II. “Chuck is an accountant who on the inside is a dancer, and he contains multitudes, but he’s there to show us that we contain multitudes, to remember the infinite possibilities that we’re all born with,” Hiddleston says.

“You can try anything in life as long as you don’t hurt other people,” he continues. “Your life is yours to live and yours to explore, and yours to be curious about. And that curiosity is actually what sustains you.”

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Despite the movie’s supernatural ending, Hiddleston hopes audiences leave theaters on a hopeful note. “I think it inspires an instinct to live, [and] think, ‘Well, I have now. I have the present moment. I have the people I love.’ You start to be grateful for what you have and inspired to live as fully and as joyfully as you can, with the awareness that life also contains some of the hard stuff. It contains struggle and pain and loss and grief, but it also contains joy and connection and love and inspiration.” 

He adds, “If you can hold onto that, you’re living.”