The Long Walk (2025)    Lionsgate/Horror-Thriller    RT: 108 minutes    Rated R (strong bloody violence, grisly images, suicide, pervasive language, sexual references)    Director: Francis Lawrence    Screenplay: JT Mollner    Music: Jeremiah Fraites    Cinematography: Jo Willems    Release date: September 12, 2025 (US)    Cast: Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Garrett Wareing, Tut Nyuot, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Jordan Gonzalez, Joshua Odjick, Roman Griffin Davis, Mark Hamill, Judy Greer, Josh Hamilton, Noah de Mel, Daymon Wrightly, Jack Griffin, Thamela Mpumlwana, Keenan Lehmann, Dale Neri, Teagan Stark, Samuel Clark, Emmanuel Oderemi.

Rating: *** ½

 So far this year, we’ve had three adaptations of Stephen King’s works with one more (a redo of The Running Man) on the way. Let’s run down the list. The Monkey, a bloody and wickedly funny fright flick, was quite good. The dramatic fantasy The Life of Chuck is one of the year’s best films. Too bad nobody went to see it. Now we’ve got The Long Walk, an adaptation of the novella written under King’s pseudonym Richard Bachman. I remember reading it 39 years ago when it came out in paperback in the collection The Bachman Books. It was a gripping and intense story set in a dystopian alternate future. I’m happy to report the film is just as great.

 Actually, I don’t think happy is a word that can be applied to The Long Walk in any context. It’s a bleak, depressing piece that makes The Hunger Games look like a game of hide and seek. It takes place in a totalitarian version of America, a country ravaged by poverty, despair and fear. There’s a contest called “The Long Walk”. The young participants are selected by lottery. The idea is to keep walking until only one “Walker” remains. Walkers must maintain a speed of no less than three miles per hour. If they slow down or stop, they receive a warning. If a Walker gets three warnings, he is executed on the spot. The last one alive is the winner.

 The guy running the show is a tyrannical military guy known only as “The Major” (Hamill, The Life of Chuck). He tells the Walkers their participation is vital to the health of the country as it motivates others to be productive. Of the 50 boys/young men taking part in the annual event, the story focuses on Ray Garraty (Hoffman, Licorice Pizza), a fellow who has a good reason for signing up for this deadly game. He forms a close friendship with Peter McVries (Jonsson, Alien: Romulus), an optimistic sort who can see past the ugliness of the world. We get to know a few others: little wise guy Hank Olsen (Wang, Karate Kid: Legends), religious Baker (Nyuot), mysterious Stebbins (Wareing, Ransom Canyon), Native American guy Parker (Odjick, Sweet Summer Pow Wow) and antagonistic Barkovitch (Plummer, Lean on Pete).

 There is a lot of talking in The Long Walk punctuated by scenes of shocking violence as Walkers are shot dead in the street. I didn’t mind all the talking as the characters are actually interesting as opposed to the vapid teens that typically populate horror movies. But you see, The Long Walk isn’t your typical horror movie. It doesn’t have a masked killer. It doesn’t have monsters jumping out at you from dark places. The horror is in the scenario. In what could just as easily be a commentary on what our current future holds, the world is a scary, violent place. A second civil war about two decades earlier changed everything. America is now an authoritarian regime where things like free thought and looking at forbidden material (e.g. art, music and literature) are punishable by death. The Long Walk is the only way out of poverty and despair. The winner/sole survivor receives a great deal of money and a single wish granted. The boys talk about what they’d do if they win. Ray knows exactly what his wish will be and it’s important enough to him that he doesn’t see himself losing. Of course, the other Walkers are just as determined to walk away with the money and single wish.

 Francis Lawrence, who directed all of the Hunger Games films, once again gives us a nightmarish vision of a society that’s neither kind nor fair. He works in perfect harmony with cinematographer Jo Willems and production designer Nicolas Lepage to create a world none of us want to live in. It has a gloomy, washed-out look with its Dust Bowl-esque tableaus, empty storefronts and desolate landscapes. Forlorn-looking people stand and watch as the exhausted boys trudge by. Certain images, like a woman dressed in black standing in front of a church, stay with you. The Long Walk itself comes to resemble a sort of Purgatory. There is nothing to feel good about in The Long Walk.

 The performances, for the most part, are pretty good. Hoffman shows that talent is indeed hereditary. He channels his late father Philip Seymour Hoffman as the Everyman hero of the tale. He’s likable, slightly goofy and resolute in his determination. He often flashes back to moments with his mother (Greer, Jurassic World), a supportive parent worried that she’ll never see him alive again. The scene where she drops him off at the starting line is heart-rending. Jonsson is also great at Ray’s new best friend, a good person who can’t stop himself from helping his fellow Walkers even after he agrees it’s time to go “every man for himself”. Plummer nails it as the a**hole of the group, an angry instigator who directly causes the death of another Walker. Hamill is out of place as a cartoonish villain who does everything but twirl his moustache.

 I don’t often say this about film adaptations of books, but The Long Walk gets it right. It’s almost exactly the way I saw it in my mind when I read it in ’86. SPOILER ALERT! They did change the ending a bit. If you read the novella, you know why. I’ll leave it at that. It doesn’t hurt the movie any so that’s good news. Even better, it proves that it is possible to do right by King in the movie from page to screen. It’s one of the best King adaptations EVER.