In 1996, author Chuck Palahniuk saw his debut novel Fight Club hit the shelves. In 1999, David Fincher’s film adaptation was released to critical acclaim. The rest, as they say, should have been history. Palahniuk followed up with an increasingly dark body of work, all of which would have translated easily to the big screen. But they didn’t.

Considering the success of someone like Stephen King, it’s difficult to understand why Palahniuk’s work hasn’t been snapped up by film companies. Over the years there have been various announcements that more of his books are making their way to cineplexes, but they always seem to stumble along the way.

Somehow Choke made it. The fact that it isn’t necessarily one of the most cinematic of his books only adds to the surprise. It’s a complex story of family and addictions. Sam Rockwell plays Victor Mancini - a sex addict with a curious penchant for pretending to choke while eating in a restaurant; this allows other customers to feel good about rescuing him with a ‘heroic’ Heimlich manoeuvre – so much so that he manages to get them to reward him with money for saving his life. Nice work when you can get it.

Fetching isn't it? It used to be the cover to my loo seat...

The money helps go towards paying his mother’s medical bills. She is hospitalised, suffering from Alzheimer’s. Throughout the film there are scattered flashbacks of Victor as a youth with his mum (Anjelica Huston), which go some way to explain why he is so incredibly f****d up.

While in the hospital he meets Paige Marshall (Kelly Macdonald), a doctor who seems keen to help with his mother’s condition. Although his addiction already recognises her on his sexdar, he considers that there may be more to just rumpy and pumpy to their relationship.

To earn a buck, Victor works at a Colonial/Williamsburg ‘theme’ park – sadly without any cool colonial type rides – where he struggles to stay in character; his boss Lord High Charlie (Clark Gregg, who is also the films director) finds his lack of enthusiasm and motivation truly offensive. He therefore does all he can to get rid of Victor and his fellow slacker Denny (Brad William Henke).

For his first film, Gregg does a good job of lifting pages from Palahniuk’s book and rearranging them on the screen. The only real criticism is, perhaps, that he’s a little too faithful (anal even) in reproducing the text. There was scope here to reinterpret key scenes (as Fincher did so well with Fight Club), which would have allowed the film to own more of the story than the book does.

However, if you’re not aware of Palahniuk’s perverted view of the world, Choke does an entertaining, almost snapshot fashion of capturing it. It’s darkish, but it would have been so much more palatable if it were darker still.