The Long Walk Review

The Long Walk is a retro-dystopian film based on a Stephen King novel, which he wrote under his Richard Bachman pseudonym.

The United States has suffered war, military dictatorship, and economic depression. This has led the government to introduce an annual competition where a boy from each state must compete in “The Long Walk.” The rules are that the boys must maintain a speed of three miles per hour and get three warnings if they fail to do so. The last boy alive wins, and the government would reward them with anything they want. Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman), the home’s state competitor, is demanded to win so he can exact revenge against The Colonel (Mark Hamill).

2025 has been a big year for Stephen King adaptations. They have also been The Monkey, The Life of Chuck, and another dystopian story, The Running Man.  It has been a great year since The Monkey and The Life of Chuck were received, and the new version of The Running Man was directed by the great Edgar Wright. The Long Walk was also well received, gaining an 88% from critics and 85% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Long Walk was directed by Francis Lawrence, who is known for making most of The Hunger Games movies. The Hunger Games did influence The Long Walk adaptation. The premise was similar, where young people were selected at random to represent their state in a death competition. The whole of America was turned into District 12, economically depressed, with most people living in poverty. The Hunger Games had a retro look to them since the residents of District 12 wore Depression era clothing, and The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes used a combination of art deco and 1950s American affluence for its art direction.

The Long Walk was designed to appear as if it were set in an alternative past. The costumes and technology looked like they came from the 1970s or early 1980s, and The Long Walk felt like a dystopian made in that era, like Solent Green or Mad Max. The novel was published in 1979, and it felt like it was a reaction to America’s situation, where there was economic hardship (the 1973 Oil Crisis), political corruption (Watergate), and humiliation during the Vietnam War. Despite it being set in the alternative past, these issues have become present again, and the idea that the only way to become rich is by winning a competition is fitting considering the current economic climate. The ideas presented were interesting. The Long Walk wasn’t a deep dystopia compared to classics like Metropolis, Nineteen Eighty-Four, or Children of Men. Due to the bulk of the film being about a group of people walking, it ended up being repetitive. The film would have benefited from a 90-minute runtime.

The film had an R-rating, which meant it could go a lot further than a Hunger Games movie could. When competitors were shot in the head, their brains went everywhere. One of the grossest moments in the film was when a character was trying and failing to hold in his diarrhoea.

The Long Walk cast was made up of young, rising talent. There was Hoffman (Licorice Pizza, Saturday Night), David Jonsson (Rye Lane, Alien: Romulus), Ben Wang (Karate Kid: Legends), Tut Nyuot, and Charlie Plummer (Looking for Alaska). They were all strong performers, and I have been impressed by Hoffman and Jonsson with their past performances. Despite all these young characters being in a competition with each other, they developed a sense of camaraderie and formed friend groups. They talked about their strategies and what they would do if they won. When Barkovitch (Plummer) tricked and taunted another competitor into breaking the rules, he ended up being hated and ostracised by everyone else. Mark Hamill was unrecognisable as the villain because of his military uniform and speaking with a deep, raspy voice.

The Long Walk was a film that worked in today’s political climate, and it can give Hunger Games fans a fix. But it did suffer from being a limited film that played out a bit too long.