Many if not most audiences will view Edgar Wright’s “The Running Man” in comparison to the 1987 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, even though both films are separate adaptations of a novel by Stephen King. So without having read that novel, this review will approach the new film from the more general perspective, with apologies to the more hardcore King audience.

Set in one of the classic dystopian futures common to the best of science fiction, “Running Man” tells the story of a desperate man trying to survive a gladiatorial game show in order to save his family.

Glen Powell plays Ben Richards, a hot-tempered but dedicated family man who can’t seem to catch a break in a world where the gap between the have’s and have-not’s has widened as fast as our technology has advanced. The combination of his temper and bad luck eventually leaves him one option to provide for his wife (Jayme Lawson) and young sickly daughter: risk his life on a deadly, immensely popular game show called The Running Man.

The premise is pretty simple. Three embattled contestants are released into society with a head start and some spending money. Twelve hours later, a team of hunters is sent to track them down and execute them. If they can survive for thirty days, they win a generous cash prize.

In the ’87 film, the action was contained to a designated playing field, separate from general society. But the 2025 version feels a lot more catered to a critique of our modern culture. Aside from letting the players out into the general population, there is an additional twist: common citizens who can get footage of the contestants and rat them out stand to win cash payouts of their own.

This social media dynamic adds a sobering element to a premise that already warns of a degrading and callous culture, and mixed in with references to AI fakery and healthcare services, the Wright version feels a lot more prescient and sobering than the more comic interpretation Schwartzenegger helmed in the ’80s.

None of these elements are especially fleshed out, though, and “Running Man” suffers from a rushed and chaotic third act that feels like it’s trying to distract viewers from its unsatisfying finale. Wright’s signature style helps the production to be engaging and interesting, but compared to the previous version, it’s also a lot less fun. Fans of the first film may especially disappointed at how this version only minimally develops the personalities of the individual hunters, who got such colorful characterizations in 1987 from the likes of Jim Brown and Jesse Ventura. 

Josh Brolin and Coleman Domingo are effective as the head of the network and the host of the titular program, respectively, and for his part, Powell is a sympathetic Richards, and certainly up to the physical challenge. Unfortunately he’s in the no-win situation of taking the torch from Schwartzenegger and his limitless reservoir of charisma.

Again, a lot of this might come down to a question of priorities. A quick Google search implies that the 2025 “Running Man” is more faithful to the source material, and its social commentary absolutely feels much more poignant and explicit. But the 1987 version is a lot more fun, and for audiences who are only familiar with the first movie, that comparison will stand out.

On its own, “The Running Man” is a solid but flawed commentary on 2025, and it might be interesting (if not sobering) to see how its story resonates in the years to come.

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“The Running Man” is rated R for scattered profanity, scenes of graphic violence, and some brief male nudity.

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Sometimes when I watch a movie I feel like the filmmaker is trying to solve a puzzle with only half the pieces. This is how I felt watching “Life of Chuck.” Mike Flanagan’s film is thoughtful and aspirational, and worthy of praise. And yet, his adaptation of the Stephen King novella left me coming away a little disappointed.

The film is told in three acts, presented in reverse order, so it’s tricky to avoid spoilers entirely. Act Three mainly follows the story of a school teacher named Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who has the unenviable task of trying to go about his job while the world around him is ending…literally.

We mostly hear the evidence secondhand: earthquakes have dumped most of California into the sea. The Midwest is consumed in wildfire. Florida has flooded. Worst of all for many, the Internet is completely offline. Marty tries to put on a good face and focus on his job, but he’s the last person to accept that the world he knows is coming to an end.

Weirdly, in the midst of all this, Marty keeps noticing ambiguous billboards and TV advertisements thanking a man named Chuck for 39 years of service…in something or other. Eventually Marty decides to reconnect with his ex-wife Felicia (Karen Gillan) as the cataclysms pass the point of no return, but even as the world circles the drain, some mystical power seems determined to offer a shout-out to the enigmatic Chuck.

Act Two sends us back in time about nine months, where we meet the titular Chuck (Tom Hiddleston) going about an otherwise routine day. He’s an accountant, a stiff well-dressed man of numbers, but a street musician (Taylor Franck) stops him in his tracks, and moments later he’s dancing in an intersection with a woman named Janice (Annalise Basso).

This introduction leads us into the meat of the film, which explores Chuck’s past, and eventually explains his connection to what we saw in the first half hour of the film. We meet Chuck as a youngster (played by Benjamin Pajak, then Jacob Tremblay), we meet his grandmother Sarah (Mia Sara), who taught him to dance, and we meet his grandfather Albie (Mark Hamill), who steered him down the road to chartered accountancy.

Much of what follows explores universal themes and conflicts, like the meaning of life and the clash between our dreams and our reality. Often the film references the idea of the Cosmic Calendar, which puts the Big Bang on January 1^st and squeezes all of human history into the last ten seconds of December 31^st.

And this is where things fall a little flat. “The Life of Chuck” aspires to be an inspiring story about the substance of our lives, and the lasting connections we make with other people. And in a lot of ways, it succeeds. But its sense of aspiring spirituality feels incomplete, trying to find hope and meaning within the bounds of the science we understand without considering the promise of we’ve been asked to accept on faith.

As a production, “The Life of Chuck” is sweet and thoughtful, with good performances and creative moments. But as a message, its hopes feel limited, and as an experience Flanagan’s film feels like it’s still grasping for its full potential. It’s also an awfully strange candidate for R-rated status, thanks to some scattered profanity that belies the movie’s generally family-friendly tone.

Whether it’s the source material or the vision of the filmmakers, “The Life of Chuck” feels designed for an audience that doesn’t know what it can hope for.

“The Life of Chuck” is rated R for some scattered profanity.

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1.Carrie (1976)

Carrie is one part coming-of-age film and the other part horror movie. Even with the story’s two remakes coming out in 2002 and 2013, the original film still stands as the best telling of this story. Filmmaker Brian De Palma builds tension in a way that few other filmmakers are capable of. There is a real sense of anger in this version of Carrie that feels unique, even when compared to the rest of the films in De Palma’s catalogue. The prom scene still holds up as one of the most well-crafted horror sequences from its era thanks to the performance given by Sissy Spacek and the well-crafted direction from De Palma. 

2. Christine (1983)

John Carpenter, one of the greatest horror directors of the 1980s, went with Christine for his adaptation of a Stephen King novel. Christine is not the most thematically dense film ever, but it does feature an impressive synth score and some impressive special effects with the car. Like most Carpenter films, Christine can be absurd and ridiculous, especially as the film enters its third act and the characters must face off against this living car. The movie knows how to be absurd in all the right ways, though, creating one of the most entertaining watches in the Stephen King horror-sphere. 

3. The Dead Zone (1983)

Probably the most underrated movie to make this list, The Dead Zone stars Christopher Walken as Johnny Smith, a man who recently woke up from a coma and now can now see someone’s future from just their touch. The Dead Zone is David Cronenberg’s swing at adapting one of King’s stories. Truthfully, The Dead Zone never quite reaches the heights of other King adaptations and also never reaches the heights of other Cronenberg films to come out during the 1980s, but it is still an entertaining time. The film does an effective job of exploring the idea of fate and also delving into anxieties around politicians. 

4. The Green Mile (1999)

The Green Mile is director Frank Darabont’s second Stephen King film to revolve around the United States prison system. Darabont’s adaptation of Shawshank Redemption was up for Best Picture in 1995 and quickly became one of the most important films of the 1990s; he then followed up that triumph with The Green Mile five years later. While it might seem like a cop-out to try and capitalize on the movement already built up with Shawshank, The Green Mile proves itself to be a lot more than just another story about the cruelty of the United States prison system. Tonally, The Green Mile is darker than Shawshank and also a bit more based around fantasy, creating a powerful drama. 

5. It (2017)

The remake of It is the most recent film to make it into the Stephen King Hall of Fame. It is a master class at balancing tone. At points, the film is as charming, if not more so, than Stand By Me, but when it needs to be, the film can become scary, gross, and even silly. It is the type of film that teenagers should watch at sleepovers; it hits all the right beats. It is hard to deny the cultural relevance of this film. It made $700.3 million at the global box office, making it both the highest-grossing Stephen King film and the highest-grossing horror film of the 2010s.

6. Misery (1990)

Misery is Rob Reiner’s second go around with a Stephen King property. Reiner’s first attempt at adapting a King story is a charming coming-of-age film in the form of Stand By Me, but his second adaptation is an intense and gripping horror-thriller about an out-of-control “greatest fan”. Not only is Misery crowned as one of King’s favorite adaptations of his work, but Kathy Bates also won Best Actress at the 63rd Academy Awards for her role as Annie Wilkes. Misery explores themes of obsession and addiction, which all cumulate in a story that feels very personal to King and creative people more broadly. 

7. The Mist (2007)

The Mist is the third and final King adaptation from Frank Darabont and it is a weird one. The Mist’s tone and directing are so vastly different from The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption that one would never guess the film came from the same director. It is pretty easy to write The Mist off as late-2000s CGI shlock, but at its core, the film is a lot more than that. The film spends most of its time with its character locked inside of a grocery store, where it quickly becomes a “Lord of the Flies” type of situation. The characters are forced to confront their differences in religion and politics, all while fending off CGI bug creatures. The Mist is also home to one of the most devastating endings of any film on this list. 

8. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2024, The Shawshank Redemption has become synonymous with the IMDB Top 250 list. Whether or not one agrees with the film’s ranking on that list, there is still no denying that the story told here is one of the great American dramas, a type of film that rarely gets made these days. The film features all-time performances from both Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, who turn the film into an unforgettable experience about the power of friendship and absolution. It is a film that simply has a perfect ending, and there is a strong argument to be made that it should have won Best Picture over Forrest Gump at the 1995 Academy Awards.

9. The Shining (1980)

Stanley Kubrick’s take on The Shining might not be the most well-adapted film on this list, but it is the best film on this list. There are few films made as meticulously as this one. There is a reason that The Shining is still considered one of the most unnerving films ever made. The Shining and all its filmmaking techniques find a way to tap into the imaginative fear people have as children and the realistic fears people have as adults. A film that is so singular in its existence that there has never been anything quite like it since, even with the Doctor Sleep sequel. The Shining remains one of the most effective and haunting films ever made. 

10. Stand By Me (1986)

Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me is one of the defining coming-of-age films to come out of the 1980s. Stand By Me might revolve around a group of boys trying to uncover a dead body in the woods, but the real horror of the film is the struggles of growing up and in the end, growing apart. The film features an ensemble cast of young male Hollywood actors, all of whom give performances that elevate the story’s writing. While coming-of-age films were a-dime-a-dozen in the mid-80s, Stand By Me continues to prove itself as one of the smartest and most thoughtful films in its genre. 

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