Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (December 4, 2025)
Across his long and storied career, most of Stephen King’s horror stories involved supernatural elements. With 2025’s The Long Walk, we get a scary story completely based in a realistic “alternate United States”.
After a brutal civil war, the US exists in a depressed state under a military dictatorship. In an attempt to inspire a perverse form of hope, the leaders operate an annual “Long Walk” in which one young man from each state participates.
Each participant in the “Long Walk” needs to trot at a pace that never drops below three miles per hour and death greets anyone who falls behind that speed. When one survivor remains, he gets to claim whatever prize he wants.
Though not published until 1979, The Long Walk actually exists as King’s first novel. He wrote it circa 1966-1967 but needed to wait until 1974 for Carrie to become his first book to reach the public.
Because I never read King’s text, I can’t comment on the quality of his prose. I do feel it gets a solid adaptation via this film, one that feels frighteningly prescient.
As much as I attempt to avoid politics in my reviews, the content of Walk makes this nearly impossible. Given the current climate in the US, it doesn’t take a large leap of faith to think the Trump administration would institute a similar enterprise.
Cripes, Trump wanted to set up a UFC-style league in which migrants fight each other! While the notion of a real-life “Long Walk” sounded preposterous a decade ago, it seems depressingly possible in 2025.
Though obviously Trump never comes up in Walk - which takes place in the 1970s – the specter of Trumpism pervades the film. Possible cinematic adaptations began to float as far back as 1988, and it seems likely any of these that existed prior to 2015 would’ve felt very different than this one.
As much as the brutal Trump era hovers over Walk, its focus really remains on the participants. Despite its high-concept premise, it comes with a dominant focus on humanity.
One shouldn’t expect much of a plot from Walk, as it really does just follow a dwindling gathering of teens as they trot and chat. That said, the movie’s character development makes it surprisingly involving.
And emotional as well. I really bonded with the roles and this made their fates all the more impactful.
Because this exists as a Hollywood flick, it becomes easy to assume the filmmakers will find some cop-out that allows more than one survivor. No real spoilers here, but I will say that the film doesn’t attempt to avoid a dark ending.
Which makes sense, even if it doesn’t leave the viewer with warm and fuzzies as he or she greets the finale. Still, Walk manages to offer a form of humanity that means it doesn’t just bring us 108 minutes of grim and depressing content.
Does it seem entirely realistic that the participants in a contest such as this would become as buddy-buddy as the kids here? Probably not, as I must suspect a real-life “Long Walk” would become much more cutthroat and “every man for himself”.
And that could create an interesting tale in its own right, but I like that Walk emphasizes the more compassionate side of things. This helps connect us to the characters and care about their fates more than would occur in a version that emphasizes the actual competition.
Given that he directed three of the four original Hunger Games movies, Francis Lawrence is no stranger to the “teens in a dystopian society forced into potentially deadly endeavor” concept. That experience serves him well.
Lawrence allows the focus to remain on the Walk participants and they flourish. We spend most of our time with audience surrogate Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) and his new pal Peter McVries (David Jonsson), and their bond helps keep the movie alive.
The supporting actors add a lot as well. We get a fairly standard allotment of personality types but the film manages to give them reasonable dimensionality.
Do these young people seem awfully philosophical and do they speak in essays too much of the time? Probably.
Does this harm the end product? No, as the movie comes with too much heart and emotional power for its moderate clumsiness to matter.
Given how it concludes, no one will view Long Walk as heart-warming and life-affirming, but much of it is. Those elements – and the lack of a cop-out ending – allow this to become a moving and compelling drama.
