The Long Walk

In an alternate-reality dystopian America, “The Long Walk” follows fifty teenage boys in a brutal annual contest, forced to march at three miles per hour with no rest, watched by a sadistic Major and armed soldiers. If one slows down too many times, he’s shot dead. Ray Garraty and his fellow walkers face exhaustion, betrayal, and the desperate fight to keep moving or die.

KING OF FOOLS: For those who don’t know, The Long Walk is based on a Stephen King novel of the same name. King has a long history of being an absolute horror story of a leftist crapheap of dung beetle douché bags. However, most recently, not even 24 hours after the murder of Charlie Kirk, King jumped on X to imply that Charlie’s death wasn’t such a bad thing because Kirk once said that homosexuals should be stoned to death. Of course, he never said that, and to King’s credit, he quickly and publicly apologized for his error. However, he did not apologize for the depravity or callousness of his comment, only that he had gotten his facts wrong. I, for one, think that’s an important distinction.

Between this and countless other disgusting comments that he’s made in the past, one may want to seriously consider the moral implications of financially supporting someone such as him by purchasing a ticket to The Long Walk.  I saw the film for free, but that’s not an option for most. I leave it to you.

The horrible, evil, twisted liar apologizes. This is what I get for reading something on Twitter w/o fact-checking. Won’t happen again. https://t.co/L7fL2Ml4eR

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) September 12, 2025

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The Long Walk Review

As massive spectacles from studios like Marvel and Lucasfilm have quickly transitioned from billions to boondonggles, mid-budget films have been experiencing something of a resurgence this year, especially those of the horror persuasion. When compared to their relatively humble budgets, films like Sinners and Weapons earned serious bank, not to mention critical acclaim… although not from everyone (see the links).

                   

Well, strap on your Nikes and stretch your hammies. Let’s talk about The Long Walk.

Like a Jack LaLanne Power Juicer, director Francis Lawrence (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire) extracts everything there is from its relatively unknown cast and a script that’s 99% walking and talking. Much like big-budget visual extravaganzas can often lean on their grand spectacle to smokescreen over a weak story, so too can single-location films like 2017’s The Dinner, with Richard Gere and Steve Coogan, bog down audiences with overwritten dialogue and stagey theatrics. However, with The Long Walk, if you’ll pardon the pun, Lawrence manages to keep the action moving forward with sometimes clever and sometimes… let’s call them “interesting” choices, despite the film’s constant flow of high-minded (if philosophically shaky) dialogue.

Unlike true chamber thrillers, which restrict a film’s action to a single, often claustrophobic space (re Cube),  Lawrence and crew benefit from an ever-changing landscape and outdoor conditions that allow him to add some flavor to each scene. This allows the ever-present and largely faceless military escort to act as the perimeter of anxious confinement needed to invoke the same sense of containment as the film’s more traditional brethren, while also keeping the visuals from stagnating.

No enclosed-space movie can survive much past the opening credits without compelling, or at least charismatic, characters for the audience to care about. This is especially true for a horror/thriller which have little chance of impressing the audience with profound musings or complex dialogue. Without these key players, such a film quickly devolves into a cheap and meaningless orgy of splatter and gore. Although none of The Long Walk’s cast is able to upscale the resolution of the film’s forgettable dialogue, the core group does manage to believably bond with one another, and it’s that fraternity more than anything else that audiences will connect with. In spite of some serious cinematic weaknesses, they will find themselves caring about each core player’s outcome, which is made all the more intense by the ever-increasing certainty that only one will survive.

Otherwise, this Stephen King adaptation is fairly pedantic. The dialogue, while natural in its cadence, doesn’t come close to resonating like in The Shawshank Redemption or The Green Mile. Likewise, the horror elements are limited in both assortment and scope, relying heavily on the slight variations in the why of their execution rather than creative flair. That’s not a criticism. If anything, it’s a nice departure from much of modern horror’s overreliance on shocking grotesquery.

However, The Long Walk does suffer from a massive misstep in Mark Hamill. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the 73-year-old, who is best known for his role as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, told the outlet that he “…didn’t want to be Tom Cruise,” meaning that it was never his goal to be a highly successful and ubiquitous star of the silver screen. Riiiiiiiigggghhhhtttt.

Well, for those still questioning whether or not that lofty (and nonexistent) goal was ever an option for the California native, whatever it was that Hamill was doing in place of acting in The Long Walk makes it clear that he should get down on his knees and thank God every day that he’s been able to find as much work as he has.

In each of his few blessedly brief scenes, Hamill plays a live-action cartoon of a child’s interpretation of a Saturday morning drill sergeant, which is driven home all the more by his ridiculously gruff and gravelly voice and cringe-inducing attempt at affecting a commanding presence. The character itself is meant to be an anthropomorphized metaphor rather than a fully realized antagonist, but one can’t help but think that an actor who could project even a drop of authority and gravitas wouldn’t have been better suited to the role than Hamill’s frumpy G.I. Joe.

The Long Walk is never going to be remembered alongside single-location greats like 12 Angry Men, but flawed though it may be, it’s relatively entertaining. When you consider the dearth of options available right now, if you’re out and have a hankering to see a movie in a theater, you won’t feel as though you’ve wasted your time or money. On the other hand, The Long Walk will probably be streaming in a couple of weeks, and it’s not a movie that must be seen on a big screen to get the full experience.

Also, Stephen King.

WOKE REPORT

Pack Your Closet

• My understanding is that there’s some debate about whether David Jonsson’s character, Peter, is bisexual in the novel (I’ve never read it). However, for no narratively relevant reason, he casually comes out as gay in the movie. The topic then vanishes from the rest of the script.

N.W.A.

• From what I can gather from an admittedly cursory internet search, it appears that there are no police in the novel. Yet, either the writer JT Mollner or director Francis Lawrence decided to add two or three on the sidelines in various scenes so that a handful of the walk’s participants can lose their minds and flick off and curse at them.
  • The police do nothing other than stand at attention and salute as the contestants walk by.

Bearded Richie Rich

• Despite the fact that 49 of 50 are participating in the hopes of getting filthy stinking rich, there’s a clunky bit of script in which the main characters discuss wealth and the callousness of the wealthy.
  • One asks the other, “How many people you know with a hell of a lot of money doing a hell of a lot of good?”
    • It’s some lazy class warfare silliness.

Maybe It’s 100% Woke

• A question that I often ask myself when filling out a Woke Report is what truly matters: intent or execution. There are a number of movies and series for which the writers/directors have tried to paint a woke and liberal picture, but fail completely, or only manage to sneak in bits here or there. Sometimes, they are so blinded by their wrongthink that they don’t realize what they’ve actually accomplished. If you were to watch only the mini-docs at the end of each episode of The Penguin, creator Lauren LeFranc would have you thinking the entire series was a female empowerment tale meant to deconstruct the systemic toxic masculinity within the patriarchy. And while the show certainly had some shades of this, specifically within Sophia’s arc, it was not the overarching oppressive theme LeFranc made it out to be. So, is The Penguin woke because LeFranc is and wanted it to be, or is it not, because she failed in her task? I tend to lean toward the latter, but I do try to include all of the information in our reports to help you make up your own mind.
• The film is a metaphor for the seeming erosion of the American Dream, a concept that both sides of the aisle agree is becoming increasingly problematic. However, we have very distinct ideas on the cause of, the level to which it is damaged, and the remedy for this diminution. The film hints at an underlying leftist philosophy that suggests personal ambition leads to self-destruction and that success can only come at the cost of others’ failure. The film further drives home that this is uniquely American with its use of Oh Beautiful being sung during a Fourth of July-like fireworks display at the end.
  • However, and this is my dilemma, when quantifying the Woke-O-Meter score for the film, the mechanisms by which the dystopian misery is foisted upon the public are all without exception those seen in Leftist eutopias like Communist Russia, Cuba, China, etc.
    • The film opens with a prayer for and by the State being played over the radio, and I have no doubt that the filmmakers intended it to be a jab at Christianity, but anyone who knows anything about political history knows that one of Marxism’s/Communism’s first initiatives is to eradicate religion and replace it with its own doctrine. Hitler and his National Socialists went so far as to rewrite the Bible and nationalize their own religion.
    • The fact that the State has taken over is more of a damnation of the Left than anything else in the film. While many of our politicians may only pay lip service to the ideas of personal Freedom and a small central government, We The People on The Right actually mean it.
    • There is a discussed push for conformity of thought via the limiting of access to specific music, reading materials, and other means of censorship. Namely, the State executes those who espouse ideas it deems undesirable. Despite the Left’s assertions that those on the American Right are perpetrators of this, I think that we have some very real, very poignant, and very recent examples of the reality being quite the opposite. That’s not to mention the historical reality that state-run institutions have been the province of Marxism, etc.
    • The list goes on and on. So, is it completely woke because the writer and director wanted it to be, or should it get a bit of a break because it fails so spectacularly and actually displays the opposite of what is intended?
      • I split the difference, but I think that it’s possible to enjoy this film if you are conservative, if you ignore one or two inelegant jabs meant to be at your expense.