At last year’s Toronto International Film Festival , the top prize—one voted on by the viewing public, rather than some cloistered jury—went to an unexpected outlier. The winner wasn’t Emilia Pérez nor Anora (those came in second and third, respectively), but rather The Life of Chuck , a film from horror auteur Mike Flanagan that was not on many people’s radar prior to the festival. At the time, the film didn’t even have a distributor—Neon has since picked it up—and was not slated to be released in 2024.

This made The Life of Chuck something of an anomaly in recent TIFF history. Usually, the People’s Choice winner takes that win and runs with it to a best picture nomination at the Oscars a few months later; prior to The Life of Chuck , that’s what had happened every year

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