Young men from across a dystopian United States compete in a contest to win untold riches—and a unique wish—in The Long Walk, opening in Prague and cinemas worldwide this weekend. This largely faithful adaptation of Stephen King‘s 1979 novel—with a few key story changes—pulls no punches and hits just as hard as it did upon release (or when the author began writing it in the mid-1960s) as a stark allegory of life in the contemporary United States.
Despite ranking alongside the author’s better-remembered works, The Long Walk was long considered unfilmable; previous adaptations set to be directed by George A. Romero and Frank Darabont never came to fruition. It’s not hard to see why: the story is almost entirely contained within a single contest that involves dozens of young men walking at a steady low speed for hundreds of miles. It isn’t exactly as exciting as the works that it inspired: namely, King’s own The Running Man, which upped the pace, and The Hunger Games series, which translated the narrative for a young adult audience.
Directed by Francis Lawrence—who previously made three Hunger Games films, including the best one, Catching Fire—The Long Walk doesn’t waste any time getting to the action: set in the rural South in a retro-dystopian U.S. that feels like a mixture of Vietnam War-era America and more contemporary poverty, there’s only a short scene between Raymond Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) and his mother (Judy Greer) before he’s dropped off at the starting line.
The Major (Mark Hamill) barks out the rules of the contest for the audience: once the young men begin walking, they cannot stop, and must maintain a constant pace of four miles per hour, tracked by a device on their wrists. If they dip below this speed, they will get a warning, which can be absolved after an hour of steady walking. If they receive three warnings, however, the next one will eliminate them from the race. The winner is the last man standing after walking endlessly through night and day, rain and shine.
Within the first ten minutes of The Long Walk, we’re up and walking with the 50 men as they begin the contest. Allegiances are made as Raymond forms a bond with Peter McVries (David Jonsson), Arthur Baker (Tut Nyuot) and Hank Olson (Ben Wang), who dub themselves the ‘Musketeers’. A loner named Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer) quickly makes enemies, while Stebbins (Garrett Wareing), the favorite in the contest, seems to have come down with a cold.
For audiences going into the film blind, a turn awaits as the youngest contestant—Curly, played by Jojo Rabbit‘s Roman Griffin Davis—cramps up and starts racking up warnings. As he receives the final one, it becomes distressingly clear what being eliminated from this contest really means: a rifle is placed next to his head and blows his face off. Only at this moment, nearly half an hour into the movie, does the film’s title ominously appear onscreen.
Even for those who know what the stakes are from the outset, it’s a shocking moment on two counts. One, for the unsparingly graphic presentation from director Lawrence, who underscores the film’s grim atmosphere with a single stroke. And two, because we fully realize at this moment that this sequence of events will repeat itself 48 more times before The Long Walk comes to an end.
King likely wrote The Long Walk in response to the Vietnam War, the fear of being drafted into what is essentially a death march that even the survivors will not be spared from. But Lawrence’s film, adapted by JT Mollner (Strange Darling), also reflects a general sense of apprehension among young men leaving home and entering a world that—if their only previous experience of it is through modern media— may feel like a dystopian hellhole.
The Long Walk is also a general metaphor for life. The titular contest is an allegory for the mundane daily tasks that we endure that slowly, over time, wear us down and ultimately break us; for the survivors, the reward is witnessing the deaths of everyone around us. This is an almost unrelentingly grim film, and even the final scenes (altered slightly from King’s story) feel drained of any hope. After everything that has happened, what can we do? Keep walking.
Given the straightforward nature of the narrative, there aren’t many surprises along the way. But what elevates this film from others of its type is the care the story takes toward crafting its characters, bolstered by evocative performances throughout the cast. Hoffman (son of Philip Seymour Hoffman) gives a star-making performance, and he’s matched by Jonsson by his side for most of the movie; in a smaller role, Joshua Odjick excels as Parker, a stoic soul who knows what he has bought into while others only slowly begin to realize.
A haunting score by The Lumineers’ Jeremiah Fraites adds immeasurable weight to the journey, its delicate piano and stirring strings echoing both the despair and fleeting tenderness of the march. Jo Willems’ stark cinematography captures the bleak beauty of endless highways and shadowed woods, with Manitoba, Canada convincingly standing in for the rural American South.
Ultimately, The Long Walk stands as one of the very best Stephen King adaptations ever brought to the screen—a more-than-welcome take on a classic novel untouched until now after a string of uninspired remakes (Pet Sematary, Carrie, Firestarter, Salem’s Lot). Grim, gripping, and unforgettable, it’s a film that reminds us that the only way forward is to keep moving.
