The Long Walk Review
Francis Lawrence’s Stephen King adaptation is his most mature dystopian film.
David Jonsson as McVries, Cooper Hoffman as Garraty, Jordan Gonzalez as Harkness, Ben Wang as Olson, and Tut Nyuot as Baker in The Long Walk. Credit: Murray Close/Lionsgate
The Long Walk adapts Stephen King’s 1979 novel, published under his Richard Bachman pseudonym. While it wasn’t the first novel he published, it was the first novel he wrote, predating Carrie by several years. Director Francis Lawrence makes this his latest dystopian film, after directing four Hunger Games movies and I Am Legend. The movie is a tough watch that still feels like a timely allegory, despite the material’s Vietnam War-era origins.
The film takes place in an alternate 1960s where a totalitarian regime rules America. The state is embodied by a brutal man known only as The Major (Mark Hamill), who is not above personally executing people on the street for the crime of reading forbidden literature. After a civil war in the recent past, the Major created a yearly televised event known as the Long Walk, where 50 young men, each representing a state, walk until only one remains. Slow down to under three miles per hour, and you get a warning. Three warnings in three hours, and you get your ticket: a point-blank shot to he head with a carbine by a soldier. Signing up to be picked for the Walk isn’t compulsory, but everyone who can does. Anyone living in the bleak economic conditions of the day can’t turn down the cash prize.
Mark Hamill as The Major in The Long Walk. Credit: Murray Close/Lionsgate
In the film’s powerful allegory, those who can’t keep pace face immediate, fatal consequences. This mirrors how institutions pit individuals against each other in zero-sum competitions where failure means elimination; people must constantly perform or risk being cast out. The economy, the rat race. You’re poor? It’s gotta be because you’re lazy. Prove you’re not by marching to your death.
The authoritarian structures use competition as a means to maintain control. Citizens are too busy competing to question the system itself, allowing the authoritarian power to remain unchallenged. Step out of line, fail to obey, and the power will crush you. Meanwhile, others are too busy viewing the human suffering as a spectacle.
Cooper Hoffman as Garraty and David Jonsson as McVries in The Long Walk. Credit: Murray Close/Lionsgate
The story is devastating. The men in the contest, an ensemble led by Cooper Hoffman as Raymond Garraty and David Jonsson as Peter McVries, build camaraderie knowing full well that those friendships will be destroyed by violence in the death march. The Major and his military are devoid of compassion or human decency. The film’s depiction of the violence is gruesome and unflinching. I admire Lawrence’s directorial choices in this film, a far more mature exploration of some of the themes also present in his Hunger Games movies.
Roman Griffin Davis as Curly in The Long Walk. Credit: Murray Close/Lionsgate
The entire movie, save for a few minutes of flashback, takes place on the road. It was reportedly made for less than $25 million, a very small budget by Hollywood standards, and I’m curious to see how it does at the box office. We need more low to mid-budget films to hit the cineplex rather than go straight to streaming. This is one of the better movies adapting the work of Stephen King, our most adapted living author. Go see it.
The Long Walk opens in theaters nationwide on September 12, 2025.
