The Long Walk is a story that I never thought could be adapted into a film. Stephen King‘s first written work, published under his pen name (Richard Bachman) after he began his career as a horror writer, is one of my favorite pieces of fiction from the master of horror. More dystopian than traditional horror, The Long Walk (2025) is still a story about growing up in a way that only King can tell.
Directed by Francis Lawrence and written for the screen by JT Mollner, the film centers on a group of50 young men (mostly 18 and 19 years old) who participate in an annual contest known as “The Long Walk,” where they must maintain a steady walking speed of three miles per hour.
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The contest has a starting line, but no finish line. Every mile is televised, no stops are allowed, and if they break the rules by slowing in speed, walking off the pavement, or turning on the guards escorting them, they will receive their ticket and lose.
As the walk begins, the audience sees the grim specters of the public (mostly police and families) gathered to watch the young men walk. Every mile is tracked day and night, in rain and shine; they have to keep moving. When the first boy receives his third warning, only to be shot dead, the reality begins to sink in. One of them will survive, while the others will be killed. However, the one who stands last will receive one wish and a vast amount of money.
The Long Walk (2025) is hard to watch but its hearbreaking characters are what keep you there.
Each of the young men has a different reason to be there, but they all intersect in their desperation. Some are walking to earn a living for their families, others for a future without pain, while others are walking to make the world a better place, or simply to win. But all of them have been chosen through a lottery, and as you watch their competitiveness shrink to dread, the gravity of their situation is unavoidable.
Still, the men bond, they become friends, they become brothers. They hold each other up while one sleeps at night, alternating to keep their bodies moving as their mind drifts. They hold each other as their friends fall. And every subsequent elimination rings louder and hits the boys and the audience harder.
The Long Walk is a tough task. We know, as an audience, that we will lose every one of the main characters but one, and yet, through beautiful and heartbreaking performances, we never stop caring. Each time the sound of gunshots rings, it all hurts more. While the dialogue helps sell the bonds during the long walk, it’s truly the little moments between each of the young men that make their brotherhood ring true—small moments of care and love that shatter the hostile and violent situation that has been forced upon them.
A timeless story, Stephen King’s The Long Walk succeeds in its cruelty and its care.
The vagueness of the United States’ past war and current state, as well as representations of rural middle America in the blandest of terms and the sparing use of real names for hometowns, all contribute to creating a timeless film. Some elements nod to period Americana and other moments where it could be today. Either way, it’s a choice that allows the film to resonate with any generation watching it.
During my screening, one of the people during the discussion asked, “What was Stephen King thinking about at 18 years old that made it so relevant today?” The answer for me is a simple one: the draft. It’s apparent throughout the film that the promise of a new life, money, and a future for your family in exchange for putting your name in a drawing, only to realize none of it was a choice after all, reflects the Vietnam War era that Stephen King came of age in.
Still, the reason that The Long Walk still feels relevant today is the universality of desperation. Of being sold a promise of a future, but only if you beat down the people around you, the lone capitalist victor. That’s where the film hits for everyone in the audience, especially as the world grows ever darker in the fascistic vision that the elite in our country has for us. Be their entertainment, their sports, their pawns. However, The Long Walk is even more salient when viewed through the lens of young men today. Because, like the meme says, men used to go to war.
The Long Walk is a not-so-subtle allegory for the Vietnam war, but in it, you find universal thruths that matter today.
The reality, though, is that boys went to war, became brothers with their platoon, and often came back alone. I saw it in my family, Mexican men who suffered from Agent Orange exposure that they passed down to their children. I saw it in how they couldn’t watch certain films, hear certain sounds, or, in one case, drank themselves to death. Both had their entire family of brothers drafted, despite the government allowing white families the courtesy of leaving at least one child at home.
That’s The Long Walk. And today, while not every boy may be going to war, they are still forced to carry expectations of their fathers, forced to perform a walk of their own, suffering in silence, and if you look at the suicide statistics in this country, often not making it out alive. If you walk into a morgue, four out of five of the people who took their lives are men. That statistic may not be one that some care about, but watching The Long Walk, it’s one I kept thinking about, seeing my younger brother in the faces of the boys who became brothers and then became men.
Some died with the intention just end the pain of the walk. Some did it to try to go out on their own terms, and other still because of the guilt. Some were murdered because they simply could not push their body further, and in the end, while they all started the walk believing they had a choice, it ended up that they didn’t. The Long Walk is salient for anyone who watches it, but in the current climate where men are being shoved back into a cage of competition and hypermasculinity, the film’s violence is even louder.
Dystopian simplicity makes the violence all the more intense in The Long Walk (2025).
But more importantly, its tenderness is clear as well. The Long Walk is a difficult film to watch. In adapting Stephen King’s first work of fiction, the filmmakers keep its rough edges, if only elongating it by dropping the walking speed requirement from four miles per hour to three. Still, there is an innocence that young men cling to. They try to hold onto their hopes, they try to remain loving to each other, they try to comfort each other as one by one their bodies begin to give out.
After the first ticket is punched and the life or death stakes are set, you would think that The Lord of the Flies would come into vision. Only it’s the opposite. The vulnerability that each character shows is never diminished. It is tested and stretched to the point of nearly breaking, and yet, they hold onto each other. The humanity and brotherhood they find on the long walk are heartfelt and devastating, and it can only achieve the latter by embracing the softness needed to survive.
The ensemble cast in The Long Walk features some of the highest-caliber acting you will see this year. Their chemistry is unmatched, their hearts are on display, and regardless of who they are when they start their walk, they end in a different place. A simple movie, set along one stretch of highway, for a single segment of time, the depth of emotion that each of the actors delivers is layered. They are charismatic and endearing in their own ways. They break your heart, they make you smile, and ultimately, they leave you breathless as the credits begin to roll.
Led by Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson, the ensemble cast is the beating heart of the film.
Raymond Garraty #47 (Cooper Hoffman), Peter McVries #23 (David Jonsson), Hank Olson #46 (Ben Wang), Arthur Baker #6 (Tut Nyuot), Collie Parker #48 (Joshua Odjick), Richard Harkness #49 (Jordan Gonzalez), Stebbins #38 (Garrett Wareing), and Gary Barkovitch #5 (Charlie Plummer) are a core cast like no other I’ve seen this year.
While every actor delivers a warm and heartfelt (and gutting) performance as a part of the core group of young men, Parker’s refusal to break is hard to watch, Harkness’s misfortune was one of the moments that made me look away, Barkovitch’s guilt-ridden descent is almost too much to take, Olson’s body’s refusal to give while his mind already has, and the softness and care that Baker brings even into his last moments, all of it is sometimes too much to take in.
And then you come to our core two, Garraty and McVries. Both young men, Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson, deliver astonishing performances. They leave every piece of themselves on that road, emotionally raw as the end nears, their brotherhood, their fear, their resolve. Garraty is jaded by the world in a way that I see in myself and McVries has every reason to see no light in the world and instead works hard to try and find it. Their connection and trust propel the film, but it’s how it ends that makes The Long Walk (2025) a necessary viewing experience.
Both Hoffman and Jonsson are at the start of their careers and in this film alone they have proved that the doors for their future should be wide open. And for David Jonsson, after his role as Andy in 2024’s Alien: Romulus, he has showcased his propesnity for digging deep into the audience’s emotions with a simple look, taking it further with his commanding voice. And yet, his tenderness is always front and center even in the film’s end.
The Long Walk succeeds in calling its audience to action and to emotion.
Sometimes, light can not drive out the darkness alone. Sometimes it needs action, and while it is easy to think that the film’s final moments are a complete change in a character’s motivations, the reality is that it is a realization of them.
How does one change the world if not through action? Can we save people only by alleviating one element of the suffering, or can we save more by breaking the system of oppression entirely? While I think The Long Walk doesn’t present a cut-and-dry solution with a resolute ending, it does bury morality to shock; instead, it bolsters it through action.
This is the most heartflet, heartbreaking, and harrowing adaptaion of Stephen King’s work, and it also feels like the most salient. A coming-of-age horror story, a grief story, a vulnerable story, this is one of the best films of the year. The Long Walk is unafraid to be brutal, to steal youth and innocence and not hide the violence that the men are going through for the entertainment of their country.
The Long Walk (2025) is a film that, despite its unusual treadmill movie screening marketing, is difficult to watch and even more challenging to sit through. It prompts its viewers to develop empathy for the desperate and see themselves in them. It urges us to understand the burden of the young men before us and the expectations that are breaking under.
This is a film that thrives on the tension built up through our investment and empathy for each character. The Long Walk can be viewed as a bleak portrayal of the world, or it can be seen as a story that prompts us to understand one another; it’s up to you.
The Long Walk is now in theaters nationwide.
