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Movie of the Day: The Long Walk
Today’s movie is one that I’d been looking forward to with increasing intensity the closer it got to the release date. I’m a big fan of Stephen King, but some of the film adaptations of his stories aren’t great. But I like Francis Lawrence as a director, and I really like JT Mollner as a writer, so I had high expectations for The Long Walk. Thankfully I was not disappointed.
The Long Walk is based on the novel of the same name written by Stephen King under his Richard Bachman pseudonym. The setting is a dystopian United States which is in economic ruin more than a decade after a war. Once a year, a televised competition called The Long Walk is held, ostensibly as a way to inspire the population. The competition is made up of fifty teenage boys, one from each state, who are selected through a lottery. A military leader known as The Major oversees the contest in which the boys must walk down a paved road at a minimum pace of three miles per hour. If a contestant falls below a 3 MPH pace, they are given a warning and a few seconds to get back up to speed. After three warnings, if they still don’t get back up to speed, the boy is shot and killed on the spot by the military personnel escorting the contestants. There are other rules involved, but those are the basics.
There is no finish line. The boys must continue to walk for hundreds of miles until there is only one still walking. There is a life-changing cash prize and the promise of one wish fulfilled awaiting the last boy alive at the end of The Long Walk. As the story gets underway, we meet Ray Garraty. Ray has a deeply personal reason for entering the contest, but he doesn’t reveal it until much later into the movie. In the meantime, Ray meets many of his fellow competitors. He makes friends almost immediately with Pete McVries, and the two of them bond throughout the ordeal they’ve found themselves in. The building of their bond is the driving force of The Long Walk.
I loved this movie. This is a film where the simplicity of the basic premise (i.e. a bunch of people walking and talking for nearly the entire movie) allows the writing and acting to be the most important part of the equation. As Ray and Pete, Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson are excellent. I totally bought into their friendship, and I didn’t want to see either of them die despite knowing that at least one of them probably wasn’t going to make it. At least, not without some survival-game shenanigans where they find a way to break the rules like many of these kinds of stories often do. This isn’t really a spoiler, but there are no shenanigans when it comes to The Long Walk’s rules. There is no false hope, there are only difficult decisions and heartbreaking moments. And the movie is better because of that.
The simplicity of watching people walk and talk for about an hour and a half also allows the story’s themes to shine through in an extremely effective way. This is a very political movie that touches on ever-present ideas about society, control, power, morality, revenge, and much more. Through the stories we hear the boys tell, and through their interactions with each other and with the soldiers accompanying them, we see the best and worst of human nature. Though I fail to see how The Long Walk would be inspiring to people in the dystopian world created for the story, I think The Long Walk movie is inspiring, or at least relevant, for the world that we actually live in. And I don’t just mean right now. Stephen King wrote the original in the 1960s, it was published in the 1970s and 1980s, and it was relevant in those times too. It’s a timeless work.
I watched The Long Walk a couple of days ago, and I’m still thinking about the ending. I liked it, but I am also conflicted about how I might’ve rather seen certain details handled. The ending of the book is different, but I’m not sure if the book’s ending is exactly what I’d like to see happen either. I think the basic scenario creates a no-win situation, so the most human reaction is going to be the best way to conclude the story. It’s definitely an ending that makes you think, and I love that about it.
Star Rating: 4 out of 5
I could probably go on and on about The Long Walk, but I’ll stop there. In the end, it’s a movie driven by fantastic lead performances and an intriguing concept. Not everything is perfect along the way (there’s at least one story/character moment that sticks out to me in a negative way, but I don’t want to spoil it), but the good far outweighs the less good. I recommend The Long Walk for anyone who enjoys good drama, and especially anyone who likes dystopian stories and dramatic survival game movies. The Long Walk is currently playing in theaters.
In the News
- Neon has condemned an unauthorized edit of Together made by a Chinese distributor. The alteration was made to a depiction of a wedding between two men, using AI to change one man’s face into a woman’s. Neon stated that they do “not approve of Hishow’s unauthorized edit of the film and have demanded they cease distributing this altered version.” (Deadline)
- The Stephen King novella “The Rat” is being given the film adaptation treatment. The story appears in the 2020 collection If It Bleeds, which contains three other novellas. Two of which already have film adaptations: The Life of Chuck and Mr. Harrigan’s Phone. (Deadline)
- XYZ Films and Flawless will release the films Hallow Road and Vincent Must Die as a double-feature this Halloween. The films will be exclusive to AMC theaters. (Variety)
Birthdays
Mark Hamill was born on September 25th, 1951. Mark is, of course, best known for playing one of the most iconic characters in all of cinema and pop-culture, Luke Skywalker. He’s not really known for horror, but he has been in a fair number of horror-related projects. He was the voice of Chucky in the 2019 Child’s Play remake, he had a prominent role in The Fall of the House of Usher (2023) on Netflix, he was in an 2020 episode of What We Do in the Shadows, he played a reverend in Village of the Damned (1995), and he was in the dark superhero/monster/sci-fi movie The Guyver (1991), just to name a few. He is also in the dystopian thriller The Long Walk playing in theaters now.
Also born on this day, in 1957, was Michael Madsen. Michael was a prolific actor who appeared in all sorts of genre movies, including a large number of horror films. His most well-known horror movies are Species (1995) and Bloodrayne (2005), but he was also in many lower-budget horror films including Croc (2007), Piranhaconda (2012), Lumberjack Man (2015), and Resurrection Road (2025). There are a few horror movies still to be released that Michael will appear in.
More birthdays on September 25th:
- Clea DuVall (1977) – Identity (2003), Little Witches (1996), The Grudge (2004)
- Joy Sunday (1996) – Bad Hair (2020), Wednesday (2022-2025)
- Bella Ramsey (2003) – The Last of Us (2023-2025)
Events on This Day
Urban Legend was released in US theaters on September 25th, 1998. Contemporary reviews weren’t kind to the movie, but it did well at the box office and was followed by two sequels (which are more or less standalone films). Earlier this year a new Urban Legend movie was reported to be in development. The Hollywood Reporter referred to it as a “reboot,” though the exact nature of the story is unknown at this time. Gary Dauberman, producer of Until Dawn and The Curse of La Llorona, is set to produce the new Urban Legend.
The Green Inferno was released on September 25th, 2025. Directed and co-written by Eli Roth, it is a tribute to the cannibal films of the 1970s and 1980s. The title The Green Inferno even comes from the title of the fictional mondo documentary featured as the film-within-the-film in Cannibal Holocaust (1980).
