by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Garrett Wareing, Joshua Odjick, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Mark Hamill, Judy Greer
Intro:
… if you’re in the mood for a stark, brutally confronting and existentially horrifying feed-bad film that will have you staring off into the middle distance wondering what it’s all about, The Long Walk will put you through your paces.
Stephen King has been traumatising people who read his work way too young since 1974, with the release of his first published novel Carrie. Since then, he’s sold millions of books, many of which have been adapted into iconic cinematic spookshows like The Shining, It, Misery, Salem’s Lot and Pet Sematary to name just a few. However, it’s King’s short form work that seems to really mess with people’s heads. Stories like “The Raft”, “The Jaunt” and “The Boogeyman” have caused many a sleepless night. And King’s novella “The Long Walk”, a dark and disturbing dystopian dirge, is cited by many as the Maine man’s most messed up missive. Although its subject matter is wildly crowd-displeasing, attempts at an adaptation have been ongoing since 1988. Originally, the late, great George A. Romero (Dawn of the Dead, Martin) was going to have a crack! Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist) was attached for a while, and more recently, ol’ mate André Øvredal (The Autopsy of Jane Doe, The Last Voyage of the Demeter) threw his hat in the ring. Sadly, all those attempts fizzled out. Now, in 2025, the long-gestating project is finally here thanks to director Francis Lawrence (Constantine, Red Sparrow) and the result is pretty damn solid, although not without issues.
The Long Walk is set in a near-future (or alternate history, it’s never entirely clear) dystopian United States, a desolate and impoverished place where the population is bitterly miserable after a vaguely described war, and the only entertainment provided is the death sport known as the Long Walk. Said entertainment features a group of young men going for a stroll, maintaining a pace of three miles (4.8 kms) an hour. If they slow below that pace? They get a warning. If they continue to slow down, they get a second and then third warning. After that? A soldier blows their head off. The winner is the last man walking; there is no finish line. Now that’s entertainment!
We follow in the footsteps of Raymond Garraty (Cooper Hoffman), a young man who is taking the deadly perambulation for very personal reasons and meet his new friend, Peter McVries (David Jonsson), who is a source of constant, unlikely positivity. We meet a bunch of other boys too, like Stebbins (Garrett Wareing), Olson (Ben Wang) and the deeply unpleasant Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer), who are part of a large group that is slowly whittled down over days that become increasingly desperate. And the whole event is controlled by the jingoistic, enigmatic character known only as The Major (Mark Hamill), and watched by a captive audience across what’s left of America.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, The Long Walk is a bloody grim watch. You might expect a film with such a dark plot to use a lot of flashbacks to break up the literal death march, but Francis Lawrence delivers a film here (based on a script by Strange Darling’s writer/director JT Mollner) that is absolutely unflinching in its treatment of the source material. This is 107 minutes of young men being walked to death, their graphic executions captured in grisly detail. We spend the time listening to the young men chatting about life, love and death and then witness their utter obliteration until only one is left. It’s far from an easy watch, and as a lifelong King fan and constant reader, your humble scribe was reminded of the same sickening sense of dismay, of bitter unfairness, experienced upon a first read at a far too tender age.
Performances are uniformly good, with Hoffman and Jonsson doing superb work as well as solid turns from Wareing and Wang. Hamill’s take on The Major can sometimes feel a little too close to scenery-chewing at times, but he’s effective for the most part. And, as always, major props to the deeply underrated and underused Judy Greer who plays Ray’s mum. It’s a small part but she absolutely nails it as always. Lawrence’s direction is appropriately bleak and effective, and Mollner’s script mostly does a good job. We say mostly because, honestly, it stumbles pretty hard right at the finish line.
There’s nothing wrong with changing King’s endings, mind you, the man often concludes his stories in odd ways, but the replacement here doesn’t resonate as strongly as the rest of the film, leaving this dark story to conclude on a bit of a bum note.
Still, if you’re in the mood for a stark, brutally confronting and existentially horrifying feed-bad film that will have you staring off into the middle distance wondering what it’s all about, The Long Walk will put you through your paces. Just understand that after this epic stroll, you may well be in dire need of a little lie down.
