The Long Walk

REVIEW:

I’ve heard that The Long Walk was the very first book Stephen King ever wrote, not published at the time but written long before the world truly knew his name, and that origin story makes complete sense after watching this film. Even without having read the book, the DNA of King’s storytelling is unmistakable here: a simple idea, pushed to an extreme, used to explore fear, humanity, and the quiet horror of inevitability. I haven’t read the novel yet, but after this film, I absolutely will. This doesn’t feel like an adaptation chasing relevance; it feels disturbingly in tune with the current state of the world and the economic anxieties that define it.

The film opens with text on screen: a letter of acceptance informing Ray Garraty that he has been chosen to participate in The Long Walk. The promise is staggering, unimaginable riches and one wish, and the letter frames the prize as a potential escape from the crushing financial struggles gripping the country. What struck me is how eerily close to home this feels. Though written years ago and set in a dystopian version of the 1970s, its commentary on economic desperation, opportunity through suffering, and institutional cruelty lands hard in today’s world. The letter tells us just enough to understand why someone would say yes and nothing about the cost.

Other than what’s explained in that letter, we know nothing about the Long Walk, and I love that. There’s no over explanation, no easing the audience in. Watching Garraty’s mum, played by Judy Greer, beg her son not to go is genuinely harrowing. Her fear is raw, desperate, and unexplained, which makes it worse. Why is she so terrified? What does she know that we don’t? The film wastes no time answering those questions, instead throwing us straight into the march itself, trusting the audience to catch up emotionally rather than intellectually.

The tension is established early and never lets go. The moment one boy stops walking to remove a rock from his shoe is excruciating. He receives his three warnings, each one tightening the noose, and the silence around that moment is deafening. When he finally stands and walks just in time, it’s not relief you feel, it’s dread. From that point on, every stumble and every slowed step becomes a potential death sentence. The rules are simple, but the consequences are brutal, and the film makes you feel every second of that pressure.

It’s genuinely difficult to watch each execution. There’s something deeply unsettling about how sudden and final they are, and I found myself literally shouting at the screen, begging the boys to get up, to walk faster, to survive. One moment in particular is fucking hard to watch: Harkness continuing on a broken ankle, his face a mix of agony and terror, knowing exactly what’s coming. When he’s finally shot, it doesn’t feel shocking, it feels inevitable, and that inevitability is what makes it so distressing. What really makes it work is how restrained the filmmaking is. The camera stays with the walkers rather than exploiting the violence, and the pacing is so tightly controlled that the film is never boring, even when it’s doing nothing more than watching these boys put one foot in front of the other.

The cast is exceptional across the board. The group dynamic feels authentic, lived in, and painfully human. Garraty, Pete, Arthur, and Olson form the emotional core of the film, and the chemistry between them is outstanding. Despite the bleakness, they manage to inject humour along the way, not forced jokes, but gallows humour that feels necessary for survival. You grow attached to them, start rooting for them, and that attachment becomes a liability. You don’t want any of them to die, and the film knows it.

You’re especially drawn to Garraty and Pete, played beautifully by Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson. Their friendship and brotherhood give the film its heart, and as the walk progresses, that bond becomes increasingly painful to watch. You know, as they know, that only one person can win. Every shared conversation and every moment of support carries the weight of that truth. The further the film goes, the more intense it becomes, and the deaths grow increasingly brutal, with the film never shying away from the violence or its emotional impact. Mark Hamill, meanwhile, is perfectly cast as the Major, controlled, unhinged, and chillingly authoritative.

This won’t be a film for everyone. It is, quite literally, about watching 50 boys walk, and that stark simplicity will test some viewers’ patience. But I found it completely absorbing because of how deeply it invests you in these characters, their reasons for walking, the desperation behind their choices, and the small, human conversations that slowly disappear as the walk takes its toll. In typical Stephen King fashion, the ending is frustrating in a way that feels deliberate rather than careless. Does the winner get the riches or not? I know that’s not really the point, but after everything these boys endure, physically, emotionally, morally, I couldn’t help wanting that closure. When the film ends, it doesn’t feel finished so much as it feels emptied out, leaving you sitting with the weight of what it took to survive. I’ll stay cryptic to avoid spoilers, but this is a film that lingers in an uncomfortable, haunting way.