Review: The Long Walk (2025)

Director:  Francis Lawrence

Stars:  Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Mark Hamill

There’s something inherently funny about a filmmaker who made four out of five Hunger Games films (so far!) changing tack by making this… an ostensibly YA tale of a dystopian society that pits teenagers against one another in a televised competition where there can be only one winner. Like, Francis Lawrence, with all sincerity… are you ok, pal?

Joking aside, Lawrence has played in other sandpits in the last decade, from gloomy espionage saga Red Sparrow to his buried family fantasy flick Slumberland. Here he tackles Stephen King – still somehow as ubiquitous as ever – working from Strange Darling director JT Mollner’s screenplay adaptation of a juicily high-concept idea.

We’re 19 years after a second(? third?) civil war has left America in a perennial economic decline. In an effort to rouse the proletariat from their doldrums, the titular Long Walk has been devised, in which 50 teenage boys – one representing each state in the union – compete in an endurance walk in which they must keep the pace above 3 miles an hour. Dawdlers will be warned and then summarily executed ’til only one remains. As Mark Hamill’s stern Major intones there is “no finish line”.

There is a prize, however. Untold riches and one wish which shall be granted. Quite how this is enough to Make America Great Again is never made clear. That fortunes haven’t turned around in 19 years should give the viewer some idea of the cynicism at the heart of Lawrence’s feature. The boys may as well be walking toward a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, not that there’s any hope of such colour in this exceedingly dour viewing test.

Our guide for this jaunt of pain is Cooper Hoffman’s Ray Garraty (aka #47), the home-state kid selected from the millions who sign up for this lottery every year. Plucky, driven and keen to support his fellow man with an ethos handed down by his martyred father (Josh Hamilton), Ray engenders a camaraderie between the walkers that runs counter to the every-man-for-himself mentality of the competition. Of course, not everyone is ready to buy into Ray’s approach, and a number of Stephen King staples pepper the supporting players. There’s the bully (Charlie Plummer’s aptly-named Barkovich), the potty-mouth (Ben Wang’s Olson), even a writer (Jordan Gonzalez’ Harkness).

But Ray makes fast friends with #23, McVries (David Jonsson) and The Long Walk is often at its best when it settles in and lets these two jaw together. Here we have two of the most promising actors of their generation, both already proven, and watching them naturally bond and shoot the shit is a singular pleasure in a film that otherwise leers gratuitously toward its baser instincts.

It’s been a tough week, news-wise, for gun violence spilling onto our screens, regardless of what we individually think of it. The manner in which Lawrence ensures we experience the sharp explosions of bullets to the head here might well appear ill-timed in retrospect. Or, perhaps, chillingly representative of the times we live in. Indeed, America’s romance and repulsion with firearms is ever-present throughout The Long Walk. The film feels both desirous of and traumatised by their power and ubiquity.

Sudden blood-letting isn’t the only thing to worry about. This is a gruelling journey, where the gamble of taking a shit on the asphalt is the difference between life and death. The bonhomie between these teenage brothers-in-arms is all well and good (and very true to King), but it isn’t quite enough to make up for the incredibly depressing nature of this endeavour, especially as we’re encouraged to dwell on the blood squishing in the walkers’ shoes, the delirium of their sleeplessness and grimness of their odds.

The Long Walk feels indicative of the present decline of America, viewed from across the Atlantic live, we distance ourselves from it by imagining it’s the most unhinged and terrifying never-ending season of television. But it isn’t, and its effect on us is material. Writing as a working class UK citizen, the movie also played as a gruelling representation of our own current economic and sociopolitical recession. Most of us can’t imagine being in the position to ‘own’ a house, let alone muster something meaningful for the generations who’ll follow us. Like The Long Walk, getting by means not having the opportunity to rest for a moment, and a single mistake can be the difference between staying afloat and going under.

If anything this stark reminder, wrapped up in a bludgeoning and brutal film, is a little too successful. Like those young hopefuls pressing onward up there on the big screen, this isn’t so much an experience one enjoys so much as endures. Hoffman and Jonsson are great. And the cynic in me expects this voyeuristic vision to spawn an increasingly miserable franchise (there are plenty of versions of this you could manifest). I’m just not sure how much more misery I can muster the will for.