Based off a pretty good book. Not a great one. Mid-SK. And strong tomes don’t always equate to strong films.
The blurb on Rotten Tomatoes promotes this as “Stephen King’s first-written novel.” Initially upsetting because that’s a new expression. Also misleading—do they mean Carrie? No. Research confirms: Carrie was his first published novel. The Long Walk was written when King was sixteen, later published under his pseudonym, Richard Bachman.
That fits with the narrative. It feels amateurish, the villains underdeveloped. Fine to digest as a book, but a dreadful experience on film.
A perfect premise for structuring one’s first foray into novel writing. One of his least metaphysical works, a rumination on conviction, oppression & friendship.
The Long Walk as a book has no overt supernatural or magical elements. It’s a straight dystopian story. But it edges into metaphysical territory through its themes: endless walking as a metaphor for life and death, the sense of an unseen authority directing fate and Garraty’s ambiguous final steps that blur physical reality with something existential. It’s not metaphysical in the literal King sense, but it flirts with allegory in ways that feel bigger than realism.
Reading vs Viewing
The main problem is that there wasn’t enough potential in the original narrative to merit a film. Much of what was good gets discarded in translation. Garraty’s romantic progression, for example: on the page we discover his past girlfriend only moments before he gropes a large-breasted stranger in the crowd – on a nationally broadcast camera feed. It builds tension and complicates his character. The film cuts this entirely, replacing it with hollow alternatives.
In fact, Garraty’s complexity is mostly stripped away. It’s clear how the filmmakers want us to feel about him, which makes for a far less compelling narrative.
Likewise, the crowd as a character is gutted. An early line of dialogue…
Only locals allowed until the finish line
…sidelines their role. Tho the onlookers add crucial dimension in the book. The result is a diminished mythos: a handful of locals watching the boys’ procession in silence. It breaks suspension of disbelief.
Better to have the wild, rollicking oddballs embodied in the novel. They gave the world depth. Instead, what’s foregrounded is scatology – defecation shown in vile, graphic realism. These should have stayed on the page, where the gross is more palatable.
The industry nowadays
There is an upsetting sterility to filmmaking now – the pretense of edge. Children get killed here, but the “edge” is already baked into the premise.
Sound errors only add to the problem. During Peter McVries’s introduction, dialogue is unintelligible. Later, Garraty delivers a final line, his mic fails, and the film shrugs by leaving in boom audio. Supremely inadequate – totally unacceptable in a big-budget release. They poured resources into replicating book beats, yet left in a production error. The result: a narrative that isn’t self-contained.
The gore is worse. A kid falls, scrapes his face and the VFX team renders it off in post. Pointless cruelty – safe, fake and disgusting. Same with the ankle-walking sequence: hard enough to read, unbearable to watch.
And then there’s the police presence. Two background actors stuffed into uniforms, saluting frozen on the sidelines. They may as well be statues – mute, inert, irrelevant. The choice reads as shade toward law enforcement, but it’s so shallow it undermines the world-building. It doesn’t belong here at all, and the film is weaker for it.
Mostly unknown walking youngsters
David Jonsson is the standout as Peter McVries. He delivers in almost every scene. There’s also Ben Wang, an Asian kid with a New York accent – deft work wasted in a trash film. But the ethnic padding is so pervasive nothing feels organic. It reads as self-conscious racial casting, the kind of box-ticking where a writer clearly asked: “Which of these characters can we make not white?”
The boys razzing each other doesn’t land either. In It, the banter felt authentic; here, it’s actors acting. Garraty himself is serviceable, but this isn’t the Garraty the book gave us: tall, handsome, charming enough to grab a stranger’s breast mid-walk and know it’s reciprocated. On screen he’s just another moody kid.
Still, Garraty and Peter nail the emotional turmoil in the uphill sequence. It’s the most poignant stretch of the film—an inspired horror beat that builds to a natural conclusion.
A history of deevolution
Francis Lawrence is the source of the problem. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire was one of the standout blockbusters of the last couple decades. But his work has devolved since. The conclusion of the Hunger Games films was adequate. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was one of the worst big-screen releases in recent years. The Long Walk continues that trend of safe, edgeless filmmaking.
Biguous
The Dark Tower is a popular epic fantasy series by King. A recent film adaptation makes the same mistake as The Long Walk. Removing the ending’s ambiguity is not enough to uplift an unfun journey.
King’s work often lives or dies in translation based on how the ending is handled. The Mist bleaks its finale even further, and the adjustment works. Shawshank softens its ending into something more redemptive, and it also works. But The Dark Tower and now The Long Walk take the opposite approach: stripping ambiguity, neutering allegory, and mistaking closure for meaning. The result is failure.
This was not a story to adapt directly off the page. Alterations were necessary, but not the kind that gut the edgy (fun) stuff while amplifying scatology and CGI gore. What we’re left with is another Francis Lawrence production that mistakes sterility for seriousness, and cruelty for edge.
The Long Walk deserved either bold reinvention – or no adaptation at all. Instead, it limps along, a technical achievement devoid of inspiration.
★★★
Briefer takes at IMDb & Letterboxd.