Francis Lawrence brings us the year’s third Stephen King adaptation, and it’s a good ‘un. Here’s our The Long Walk review. “Proper fucked up.” These words stick out to me from the ten pages of messy notes I made during The Long Walk. Mostly because they’re written in huge letters in the middle of a ... The Long Walk review | Now here’s a surprise
Francis Lawrence brings us the year’s third Stephen King adaptation, and it’s a good ‘un. Here’s our The Long Walk review.
“Proper fucked up.”
These words stick out to me from the ten pages of messy notes I made during The Long Walk. Mostly because they’re written in huge letters in the middle of a page, but also, having thought and processed the film for a couple of days, they also ring the most true.
The Long Walk is one of 2025’s four Stephen King adaptations, following The Monkey, The Life Of Chuck and premiering ahead of the upcoming The Running Man. Francis Lawrence, best known as the director of everyThe Hunger Games film after the first one, is in the director’s chair. As you’d expect, The Long Walk is particularly suited for his talents.
As the title might suggest, The Long Walk is about… a long walk. A really, really long walk. In a dystopian version of the US, under military rule, young men can sign up for a yearly competition in which 100 of them walk until only one remains. The rules are simple; step off the road, walk at a pace less than three miles per hour or stop and you get your “ticket”. In other words, a soldier will shoot you in the head.
You might already detect some similarities to Panem’s finest, but The Long Walk is a very different story. In earlier dystopian trips Lawrence proved particularly gifted at implying brutal violence without showing much of it, in order to make The Hunger Games franchise accessible its target audience.
But the director lets it all loose with The Long Walk. The adaptation doesn’t tone down any of the novel’s brutality. If anything, Lawrence makes sure to create images and scenes that will stay in your mind long after walking (chortle) out of the cinema. Yet The Long Walk never feels excessive, or like its violence is just cheap spectacle. It serves the film and its themes well and Lawrence knows just how much to show and how to use sound design to his advantage.
The director refuses to turn the camera away from the violence and it’s not a spoiler to say many of the boys face cruel ends to their lives. There’s also no turning away from other bodily functions; if you’re wondering what one does when one needs to ‘poop’, the film will gladly show it to you. There’s almost a cruel sense of humour to the film at times, but with its levity soon underlined by a more serious tone. For a film that’s still aiming for pretty mainstream appeal, The Long Walk feels ambitious and bold and all the better for it.
But its viciousness is balanced by the undeniable bond between its cast. Cooper Hoffman plays Ray, who acts as our eyes and ears into the story. Hoffman’s portrayal is both empathetic and accessible, even if the character itself comes off a little bland.
It’s David Jonsson who’s the standout here though. Already so impressive in Rye Lane and Alien: Romulus, the actor brings his unquestionable charisma to the screen, offering much needed contrast to Hoffman’s Ray.
Despite its dystopian setting, The Long Walk feels dangerously close to our world. The novel, released in 1979, doesn’t specify a year the story is set in, but there’s a hint of Never Let Me Go’s timelessness here. The contest is advertised as a means to “break free from today’s financial struggles” and Mark Hamill’s emotionless, barbaric Major speaks of an “epidemic of laziness” which has led to the current state of the world. We only get little hints at what happened for the world to become this depressing, but it’s hard not to compare our own situation to the one imagined by King.
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Yet it’s Hamill’s performance that feels perhaps a tad out of place in the film. After such a heartfelt turn in fellow King adaptation The Life Of Chuck, Hamill isn’t best served here by the script – nor can he find the right tone of evil without making the Major into almost a comic-book villain.
The Long Walk is as thrilling as it is disturbing. It’s a film I’ve been most surprised by this year; Lawrence’s track record is a mixed bag littered with some absolute gems, but I could not have expected something this clear-eyed and daring. The Long Walk will likely go down as one of the best King adaptations ever made.
The Long Walk is in UK cinemas 12th September.
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