The Long Walk: A Walky, Talky, But Worthy Test of Endurance
By Thom Ernst
Rating: A-
In the never-ending stream of Stephen King adaptations (including those under his Richard Bachman pseudonym), The Long Walk stands out as a dystopian riff on Stand By Me, where a totalitarian nightmare replaces sentiment and nostalgia.
The boys here don’t bond over finding a dead body—they bond over the odds of becoming one. And just in case nostalgia still lingers, the film throws in a dose of on-screen fecal matter for good measure.
Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Tut Nyuot, and Ben Wang in The Long Walk.
If Stand By Me suggests lost innocence, then a truer cinematic companion is Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969). Both films fixate on endurance and the spectacle of despair. Pollack’s contestants are adults in a Depression-era dance marathon; King’s are boys barely out of adolescence, and the price of exhaustion is far higher.
Set in a near-future America staggering out of an unnamed national catastrophe, The Long Walk seems aligned with King’s well-documented contempt for the Trump era. Whether intentional or not, the allegory is hard to miss. The result is less a horror film than a morality play, closer to a war movie than anything supernatural. Cruelty replaces jump scares, and the terror lies in a government-sanctioned endurance test where suffering is expected and failure fatal.
At the centre of this grim spectacle are 50 boys, competing for a life-altering fortune and a “wish.” The money makes sense. The wish is another matter. Its Disney-like connotation conjures images of Aladdin’s fast-talking genie or Jiminy Cricket chirping from a conscience-stricken corner. It’s a word that clashes with the brutality of the contest, like being invited to a birthday party held in a minefield. That single detail reminds us how young these boys are, and how cruel the game they’re forced to play.
But horror fans will still find plenty to squirm over. Instead of a traditional monster, those craving something sinister will find that Mark Hamill’s Major more than fits the bill. The Major rallies the boys with gravel-voiced pep talks, praising their courage with fatherly admiration one moment while condemning them to death with vicious authority the next.
But perhaps that contradiction in character is not so far-fetched. This is not the first time King has given us caregivers who betray the trust they are given: Rainbird in Firestarter, Beverly’s dad in IT, Teddy’s dad in Stand by Me, and of course, Jack Torrance in The Shining.
Where the film falters is in its restraint. If ever a short story (and really, it’s more of a novella) demands a mini-series treatment, it’s The Long Walk. Aside from giving little to the Major beyond his display of military bravura, and none of the soldiers gaining even face recognition, the boys are short-cut into archetypes; the philosopher, the seeker, the coward, the bully, the joker, the proto-King writer.
One suspects richer stories linger just off-screen. At nearly two hours, the film still feels abbreviated and light on details. Whether the source novel fills those gaps is a question for the page, but in the film, the half-told stories of its characters play like bookmarks meant to keep our attention rather than maintain tension.
Francis Lawrence directs with more confidence than in past outings (Water for Elephants among them). His Depression-era sensibility remains, but here he filters it through Diane Arbus-style Americana with families lined along the walk’s sidelines, staring as if complicit in the spectacle.
Cooper Hoffman’s Garrity emerges as the group’s compass, with David Jonsson’s McVries serving as the film’s conscience; their tentative, then steady bond offers the closest thing to sentiment the film allows.
Ironically, there is a great deal of chatter for a story where movement is the constant theme. But the dialogue keeps in step with a rhythm that feels borrowed from old Hollywood war films, the kind where camaraderie is as important as the battle and conversation is less about advancing plot and more about shaping ideas. Here, those ideas carry a distinctly King-esque weight: a bruising critique of America, fired point-blank and without apology. Subtlety is not in the arsenal, and every observation lands like a bullet from an elephant gun.
No one should mistake The Long Walk for fun. But there’s satisfaction in its endurance, in the way grim inevitability drives the narrative with allegorical force. By the credits, you’ll feel as though you’ve marched every mile alongside the boys exhausted, shaken, and strangely, perhaps, wanting more.
The Long Walk. Directed by Francis Lawrence. Stars Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Mark Hamill. Opens in theatres, Friday, Sept. 12.