‘The Long Walk’ is a 2025 drama/horror film adapted from one of Stephen King’s written works. It is directed by Francis Lawrence and stars Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Tut Nyout, Ben Wang, and plenty of others. The story follows a dystopian American society in which every year an 18-year-old boy from each state in the US is selected to participate in a grueling physical contest known as ‘The Long Walk’ where the must continuously walk at a certain speed or be shot dead by a member of their military escort party, the last participant standing is declared the winner and receives a hefty cash prize and 1 wish for whatever they want. This contest is done in an effort to promote hard work ethic and perseverance in all of the citizens that watch it and follow along, but the contest is all too real to the 50 young men participating in it.
Don’t get me wrong, this movie has its moments of gore and brutality, and they don’t shy away from showing you that when the time comes for it, but the real horror of this movie lies in the tension before the kills. When characters come to a stop from pure exhaustion or muscle cramps or because they have to use the bathroom and you’re waiting in sick anticipation while they’re being read off their warnings to see if they’ll make it up in time or not. More so than even the tension or violence though, this movie had plenty of good dialogue and heart. The main characters or “the musketeers” as they started to call each other all had their different character traits about them, but you grew to really know them and care about them just through the dialogue between them all on the walk. The more main characters, Ray and Peter, truly became a great duo through the course of this film, and it made it so hard because you knew the likelihood of both of them making it through this walk was very slim, but you were strapped into the ride at that point regardless. Outside of even the more main group of 4 or so that we spent a lot of time with, there didn’t feel like a lot of unimportant or background characters in the film. A lot of the participants on the walk had some sort of character development and a certain way about them that distinguished them from the others, so overall I think this movie just did an excellent job with its character building and development, especially with a runtime under 2 hours.
This is a movie I feel like would do America some good to watch right now. I’m not going to get political or dive too deep into any of that, but if you watch the news or know anything about the current political landscape out here in America, you know it’s basically a battlefield nowadays. This movie showed all these young men, no matter their motivation to be on the walk and no matter what they thought about the world around them and no matter what walk of life they came from before this, coming together in unity and brotherhood in an attempt to push and drive their fellow man just a little further forward. There was a real sense of togetherness that they all grew to develop with each other because they were going through this grueling and miserable experience together, nothing else mattered in those moments but keeping their sanity and their humanity intact. This movie although horror, felt more like a ‘Stand By Me’ Stephen King kind of story than an ‘It’ Stephen King kind of story if that makes sense. The story was more pushed forward and driven by dialogue and developing friendships than it was by scares. Really this was a pretty simple story, 50 young men being forced to walk nonstop or be killed, but the characters and the performances by the actors portraying them is what propelled this into being something special and something more. There wasn’t a noticeably weak link among them, all of them carried their weight and brought something special to their character, but David Jonsson and Cooper Hoffman who portrayed the main characters Ray and Peter really tugged on the heartstrings and gave you hope simultaneously.
This movie does hit hard. It’s worth the watch certainly, but it’s a little on the heavy side, so it doesn’t have as easy of rewatch value as some of Stephen King’s adaptations. This isn’t going to be a flip on some random evening for some fun and cheap entertainment kind of movie, but that’s almost a compliment. I think this movie deserves more heart and brain and attention than something you can just brainlessly flip on, not because the story isn’t in itself simple, but the performances and messages within the film deserve more attention. This movie is currently in theaters so check it out if you’d like to support it and let me know what you think! I’ll be back soon to talk more new movies, horror movies, NFL football, and WWE wrestling with you so stay up to date with the page to see all the latest posts!
