The Long Walk [2025]
“There’s one winner and no finish line.”
Stephen King writes a lot of books, and a lot of those books get adapted into movies. As with any large body of work, some will be good, some will be… not so good; but somehow King’s adaptations manage to land themselves in the “not so good” category more often than not [of his 68 films on Rotten Tomatoes, only 12 have a score of 80% or higher, with the total rising to just 18 if you include the 70% range]. Now, there’s plenty of reasons that an adapted work might get panned — often times they’re fine movies, but bad adaptations — and, being that I haven’t read The Long Walk yet, I can only speak to the film itself… but speak to it I will, as Francis Lawrence and JT Mollner’s take on the tale is both powerful, poignant, and difficult to watch in all the right ways.
In a dystopian America, 50 male contestants are chosen each year to enter “The Long Walk”, a competition where the last man standing is given the chance of a lifetime: Untold riches and the fulfillment of any wish he chooses. When you’re desperate enough, any way out seems like the right one, and any price becomes one you’re willing to pay. The rules are simple: Don’t stop walking.
While the story itself was written over 40-years ago, The Long Walk feels as if the concept had been ripped from the headlines of this morning’s paper, and is a difficult watch not only because of its violence towards these young men, but because of the way it echoes a world it, at the time, knew nothing about. Watching this fleet of teenagers fight for a better life for themselves and their loved ones while the confines of a careless system impose heartless rules that force them to sacrifice their dignity, health, and sanity… all for a chance at prosperity is horrifically reflective of how many people feel in the real world every day. The allegories to desperation calls like joining the military for a hope of a meaningful future, the struggles of trying to find any solution to make ends meet, and the depravity in having to clamber and climb over the [corpses] of your fellow man for a shot at success are plainly felt and sharply depicted in the cynicism of this film. From it’s simplistic cinematography to it’s crackling sound design, The Long Walk is both an easy and a difficult film to recommend.
Something that makes this experience work is its unwavering commitment to forcing you to participate during some of its more difficult moments. The story is about teenagers taking what is effectively a forced march along a stretch of highway with no breaks, limited food, and only three 30-second warnings should they falter. I usually like to avoid spoilers during these reviews, but this is more of an experience movie so I feel like warning you of the experience itself is valid. So, here it is [highlight to see]: When your three warnings are up, you are shot in the head and killed in the street for all to see… And the film does not shy away from forcing you, as the audience, to participate in these killings. Yes, there are some that you avoid, but there are many that you have to experience in full gory detail. It’s both a brilliant and disturbing move on the part of the filmmakers, and one that I greatly appreciate. The Long Walk forces you to both experience the event alongside the contestants, while also putting you in the shoes of the viewers who watch from the comforts of their own homes, and foists upon the audience interesting questions about the real world:
Does choosing to view evil acts make you complicit in some way?
What responsibility do we have to each other when the guise of “volunteering” removes the thinly veiled desperation that may have caused it?
Is there any reason for you to turn off your phones, computers, or TV’s when the happenings on the other side of those picture-machines are going to happen whether you’re tuned in or not?
There’s a lot of interesting things that happen when you turn this story into a film, and I think that they’re all good and worth considering [I’m also excited to read the book and see if they’re explored there at all]. Through modern technology, we’ve become a heavily voyeuristic society and, while I certainly am not advocating for certain things, I wish the film had driven some of its points home a little more by better portraying the actors as the teenagers the story is supposed to be about. A “young man” and a “teenager” are pretty different things. That said, this is an incredibly visceral experience, and one that I find very timely.
Performances are excellent across the board, helping to sell the drama, the horror, and the heartbreak of these characters who must compete both alongside and against one another for a shot at what is otherwise entirely too unlikely for them to reach. Something about watching a film starring Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son as a boy attempting an impossible challenge to avenge his father and enact change is… moving even during its lightest moments. David Jonsson puts on an incredible show as the motivated and deeply heartening #23, Peter McVries, and even Charlie Plummer [who I typically find very distracting in things] plays his part to a T and delivers something believable, frightening, and upsetting all at once. Every character has a part to play, and every part represents something about ourselves, our society, and our very natures as people; and each one is both brilliantly depicted and devastatingly destroyed right in front of our eyes. There’s not much left on the table by the end of The Long Walk… even if its closing moments are cheapened slightly by a weird choice of voiceover.
“I DID IT ALL WRONG!”
Setting its tone early [as shown with my above-mentioned commentary], The Long Walk is not going to be a film for everyone; it’s bleak, it’s challenging, and it’s a pretty unforgiving look at the attitudes of many people who sit in many different chairs all across the nation, but it is one that I think is important and thought provoking. Through the participants of the Walk, we experience the hopelessness held within many modern adults who see no chance at things once thought as staples of progression like homeownership, stable careers, or retirement. The onlookers show us a reflection of ourselves at times: timidly watching without action despite the wrongness of what goes on around them, some even cheering on their favorite participants in a dystopian depiction of our own desperation to see somebody, anybody, succeed in this life. Through the enforcers, we [at best] see a ripple of government systems and regulations that serve only to strangle those who suffer by enacting arbitrary rules, fines, and red tape that leave people floundering for air more often than actually creating any sort of network for assistance, but even more violently they represent exactly the thing they depict on screen: powerful consequences for disobeying the rules of the game we’re all apart of — walk until everyone around you stops, or die trying. And through the Major himself [played by the always fun Mark Hammill] we get a disgustingly accurate showing of the heartless “patriotism” and celebration we’re supposed to exhibit as good little citizens for the “sacrifices” those around us make, even though the entire system itself is set up explicitly to force those losses upon them. While I certainly wouldn’t laud The Long Walk as “artistic” in what it wants to say, I also wouldn’t use the word “vulgar” in a derogatory way, but instead as a compliment.
Unlike most films, The Long Walk is less about its story, and more about how it makes you feel; it’s a tale about the journey, not the destination and, as such, I found it to be very engaging, very moving, and very disturbing… All great things for this kind of media and I mean all of them as massive compliments. As a King adaptation coming from the director of the various Hunger Games films… I didn’t have terribly high hopes coming into this one, but I left with an entirely different sense of the roads I had to drive home upon and the paths we all tread each and every day. I think there’s a lot of ways to categorize this film in terms of genre and I see a lot of classifications thrown around the internet but, for me, at the end of the day, this film is a simple and strong “horror” entry into my spreadsheet. It’s too real, it’s too close, and it’s too unflinching to be anything else.
