In the near future, America is a dystopia ruled by a totalitarian regime. The whole nation is recuperating from the disasterous economic consequences of a long, violent war. The government has censored art, music, and freedom of expression. Annually, they host a contest, where 50 young men, representing every state in the country, walk at three miles per hour until only one survives. The winner gets riches beyond their wildest imaginations, and a single wish that has to be granted no matter what. They call it The Long Walk. An adaptation of one of Stephen King‘s most beloved novels, The Long Walk is a brutal, unflinching adaptation that beautifully captures the spirit of its source material, telling a timely and heartbreaking story about brotherhood in a time of division, rebelling against authoritarian government, and maintaining our collective humanity in the darkest of times.
The novel The Long Walk was first published in 1979, under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman. It is reportedly King’s earliest written novel, written sometime around 1966-1967 whilst he was still attending the University of Maine. It’s taken a long, complex route to the big screen, with rumours of an adaptation first beginning in 1988, when legendary filmmaker George A. Romero was considered to direct a feature film interpretation. Nothing came of these rumours, until 2007 when Frank Darabont (director of King adaptations The Mist, The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption) announced that he had secured the rights to an adaptation. Yet, nothing came of this attempt either, nor a 2019 attempt at adapting the novel under the lead of director André Øvredal. It finally began pre-production in 2023, with a script by JT Mollner (Strange Darling), direction handled by Francis Lawrence (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire) and produced by Lionsgate Films, ultimately releasing worldwide on 12th September 2025.
The Long Walk follows Raymond ‘Ray’ Garraty, a frustrated young man from Maine who enters a raffle to join the annual contest, The Long Walk, much to the distress of his mother. Alongside fifty other male contestants, he must walk until only one remains. Along the way he becomes close friends with an optimistic, empathetic walker named Peter McVries, and the two try to maintain their humanity as the walk becomes gradually more and more horrific, fighting to win in order to potentially achieve their retrospective wishes that might change the world for the better. This is very much a film that is light on plot, but comes alive with beautiful and rich characters, who are wonderfully easy to invest into and feel for. Some of the boys on the walk try to deliberately sabotage one another or get others killed, making enemies out of the other contestants. Some of them keep to themselves out of fear of making connection. Some make friends, allies, or even brothers. The film puts emotions and feeling at the forefront and dedicates all it can to make the viewer feel as much as possible. Shock, horror, anger, fear, disgust, sadness, joy. It’s all there. It’s wonderfully refreshing to see a horror movie so openly moving and full of heart and soul, where the emotional headspaces of our cast of characters is the core element that enriches the horror at every turn.
The film’s script, written by JT Mollner, is really great for the most part. Much of the dialogue is lifted directly from the book, which can sometimes come across strange – the book is over fourty years old, after all, and young men don’t really speak that way these days – but almost works in the films favour, giving us a hint at the type of culture promoted by the State and forced on to the young men involved in the walk. It also gives a timeless quality to the film, which could be set in the future or an alternate version of the past, and it doesn’t date itself with poorly handled modern pop cultural references. There’s a lot of monologues throughout this film, which may turn off some, but I found it worked really well, especially because of how strong the actors are at delivering them every time.
The dialogue between characters is snappy, funny and effective, with most of the major characters feeling well written and thought about in-depth. You bond with them really deeply, which makes the pain that is about to come all that more tragic and difficult to watch, in the best way possible. It’s refreshing as well to see the script place emphasis on healthy expressions of care between men, allowing for a type of wholesome, sincere masculinity in the film that lacks in machismo or aggression. I think it’s incredibly important in this day and age to promote healthy, empathetic masculinity to young men, and I am so wonderfully impressed by the way this film handles it. I couldn’t help but get emotional at expressions of love, gratitude and sincerity between the characters, and appreciate how genuine the film feels. These boys come to love each other, even when they are competing against one another, and it’s beautiful to see develop, thanks to a wonderful script that places the characters and their feelings at the forefront.
he film adapts the novel wonderfully. Many of the changes are simply for the sake of an easier adaptation – for example, there are 100 contestants in the novel, but only 50 in the film, and they have to walk at three miles per hour as opposed to four in the book. Some characters are cut, such as Abraham, or their role is more limited, like Pearson. Their characteristics are mostly taken and given to other characters, which has the interesting side effect of giving nuanced layers to the characters who do remain, making them more complex. The Crowd who watches The Long Walk is almost entirely cut, presumably for budgetary reasons, but actually makes the film feel more desolate and dystopian. They’re instead watched through screens and cameras, which makes us, the viewer, feel like part of the voyeuristic audience enjoying the suffering of these young men.
It’s a bold move that pays off in the film’s favour, and as it becomes more and more difficult to stomach, the film refuses to pull any punches. It’s often just as shocking as the book, with contestants loose their minds and dying from suicide, having strokes or hemorrhages, even dying because of exposure, gut problems, or starvation. The most major change is the ending, which is thematically re-interpreted for the modern age, keeping some of the same concepts but resolving the films political and emotional themes as opposed to going for a ‘horrifying’ ending like the book does. This might be controversial, but I actually prefer the film’s ending, and think it manages to both be haunting and absolutely heartbreaking. Not often does a horror film make me cry, let alone weep.
Technically, the film isn’t necessarily particularly flashy or outwardly impressive in any sense, but has a workman-like style that perfectly suits the material in my opinion. Francis Lawrence consistently finds ways to keep the viewer engaged visually, despite the core premise of the film revolving around a relatively dull and repetitive activity. It’s pretty subtle stuff, but scenes are never really shot the same way twice, and he knows exactly when to lean into the horror and shock value on screen, and when to keep it on the periphery, which is often even more scary and gutwrenching. Carrying a 20 million dollar budget, the film’s limited special effects look very good, and it isn’t afraid to get brutal with some of the violence. Socks filled with bloody, broken toes, ankles scraping against the tarmac, gunshot wounds through the skull. It’s the type of violence Lawrence always hints at in his work in The Hunger Games franchise but never gets to show on screen, and here he handles it well, keeping the shock value while never feeling exploitative. One of the film’s best sequences involves an uphill climb during the rain – many of the contestants die, but the sequence choses to focus on the personal horror of our characters, and their palpable fear, whilst also hinting at some of the unbelievable violence taking place. It’s incredibly well done by Lawrence, cinematographer Jo Willems and editor Mark Yoshikawa, and the whole team does a fantastic job throughout the film at managing tonal shifts, keeping the viewer engaged, and adapting a difficult novel to adapt. Much like the script, they keep the characters at the forefront, and the film is much better for it.
The film is led by Cooper Hoffman, son of beloved character actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman had his debut in 2021’s Licorice Pizza, and has consistently been delivering good performances in the years since, demonstrating that he is a wonderful actor just like his father was. He gives his all to this film in his best performance yet, disappearing into the character of Ray and enfusing him with a fire and melancholy that’s impossible not to invest into. Ray is, at his core, a traumatised young man, struggling to heal from the death of his father, and he has to face his trauma and the scars it’s left him with if he wants to die on his own terms, or potentially win. It’s a visceral performance, with Hoffman having to display an impressive emotional range, and he succeeds with flying colors. When things get out of hand, and the final stretch approaches, Hoffman delivers one of the most emotionally devastating sequences I’ve seen in a horror film in years, and it rattled the hell out of me. It’s probably my favorite lead performance from a horror film all year, and yet it somehow isn’t even the best performance in the film.
The brightest star and beating heart of this film is British actor David Jonsson, who plays Ray’s friend and ally Peter McVries. Jonsson first broke out last year with his acclaimed performance in Alien: Romulus, and does an even more remarkable job with The Long Walk. McVries is a young man who has lived a difficult life and chooses to find hope, kindness and empathy when it would be easier to sink into aggression and violence. His dynamic with Ray is the core of the film, and their bond is the unshakeable bedrock that the film’s themes all lay atop of. He’s absolutely pitch-perfect in this film, delivering a moving and staggeringly good performance that I would argue is worthy of a major awards acknowledgement. He’s the soul of the film, the wellspring of its sense of hope and empathy, and ultimately a key ingredient in its heartbreaking and gutwrenching tragedy. I think Jonsson is going to have a wonderful career as an actor, because he’s already provided two positively incredible horror performances two years in a row, but this is legitimately one of the greatest performances of the entire year, horror or otherwise. When he cries, you cry right there alongside him.
One of the most notable supporting performances is Mark Hamill as the villainous fascist The Major, who is in charge of The Long Walk. He doesn’t necessarily appear much, but when he does he makes it count, an intimidating and terrifying presence, but also a deeply pathetic man who is easy to hate. Garrett Wareing has a scene-stealing monologue towards the end of the film, as the initially antagonistic Stebbins, who holds more secrets than one might expect. Ben Wang and Tut Nyuot play Baker and Olson, Ray and Peter’s other friends, and both deliver heartbreaking and gutwrenching performances that will leave you rattled. Judy Greer portrays Ray’s mother Ginnie, and whilst she only has a few scenes, they’re all incredibly impactful, particularly one towards the end of the film. Across the board, the acting is fantastic, and everyone is pulling their weight to make the ensemble cast work.
Now, make no mistake, this is a deeply political story. The original novel was written in reflection of The Vietnam War, and was intended to capture the nihilistic meaninglessness of that conflict and all the young boys who are left dead or permanently damaged by their experiences. The adaptation keeps these undertones but reframes it to also be about political violence and revolutionary ideology, and if such violence is necessary to enact change or whether change can be enacted with kindness and empathy instead. It’s a film trying to champion hope, but also a film with realism in mind, and the horrors the characters experience permanently change their viewpoint.
It makes some more hopeful and others less, often in the most unexpected ways. It champions connection during times of divison, the beauty of nature, music and art, and how empathy can change the world, but also champions drastic change, displaying the horrifying violence committed by fascists in the name of their ideology and how deeply incompotent they truly are. There is no possible way the filmmakers could have known what would happen mere days before the films release, but the film feels even more timely than it already was, in a truly haunting way. Audiences seeking escapism, this is not the film for you. If you want to be moved, if you want to feel, and if you want to be reminded of the potential power of the human spirit in times of hardship and authoritarianism, this is for you. I found, if even unintentional, that the context of the film’s release made it even more emotionally powerful than it already was.
Overall, The Long Walk is remarkable. Full of heart and placing its characters at the forefront, it’s one of the most emotional and moving horror films of the decade so far. It’s grounded by an ensemble of brilliant performances, particularly Hoffman and Jonsson, who deliver utterly remarkable work. It’s well written, completely unpretentious and incredibly timely, promoting healthy friendships and connections between men, community in times of division, and the incredible power of the human spirit. It’s shocking, unrelenting and heartbreaking, one of the rare horror films that will make you cry just as much as it scares or horrifies you. One of the best Stephen King adaptations to date, and one of the best films of the year, I’d suggest anyone interested run to go see this. Don’t walk.
