The Long Walk review: "One of the best Stephen King adaptations ever made"

There are over 100 Stephen King adaptations, if we're counting every movie, sequel, TV show, and spin-off. Some of these adaptations, such as The Shawshank Redemption or The Shining, are of the highest caliber when it comes to quality. Others, like Thinner or Sleepwalkers, are a fun, campy mess. The Long Walk, however, might just sit in a special category all on its own – as it takes an overall bleak, but fairly entertaining dystopian sci-fi story and turns it into a powerful, gutwrenching cinematic event that will leave you sobbing in the theater and wondering just where our society is headed.

Now, adapting King is no easy feat – as we've seen with attempts like 2017's The Dark Tower, or the straight-to-streaming Salem's Lot. King's works, even the most straightforward-seeming stories, tend to qualify as what's known in the film world as "high concept."

But how do you make a high-concept King movie without compromising the integrity of the story, while honoring the absurdity and offering introspection into its complex lead characters? Director Francis Lawrence and screenwriter JT Mollner have figured this out with The Long Walk, and the result is one of the best Stephen King adaptations ever made – joining the ranks of The Green Mile, Misery, and Stand By Me.

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Walk or die

The Long Walk wasn't the first novel that Stephen King published, but it was the first that the prolific author ever wrote. It takes place in a dystopian universe not far off from our own, where what's left of America is controlled by a fascist military leader known as the Major (played by an unrecognizable Mark Hamill). The story follows Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman), a young man who is one of 100 to enter an annual contest known as The Long Walk.

The rules are as follows: Each walker must keep a minimum pace of 3 miles per hour (which is much more realistic than the 4 miles per hour requirement in the book), and are given a verbal warning if their speed drops below 3 miles per hour for 30 seconds. A walker can lose a warning if he walks for an hour without any incident. If a walker receives three warnings and falls below the minimum speed, he is shot and killed by the soldiers walking alongside them. The goal is to walk until only one contestant is left. The prize? Whatever the winner wants, no questions asked.

Impressively, I immediately became attached to the ensemble of young, hopeful men in The Long Walk – even though I knew what was going to happen to them as the story progressed. Ray makes friends with four other walkers: McVries (David Jonsson), Olson (Ben Wang), Baker (Tut Nyot), and Parker (Joshua Odjick). They're joined by the bully of the group, Gary Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer), the wannabe roving reporter Harkness (Jordan Gonzalez), know-it-all Stebbins (Garrett Wareing), and the fraught Curley (Roman Griffin Davis).

Major problems

King is known for creating complex, morally ambiguous characters who you can't help but root for, no matter what they do – but I wasn't attached to these boys in the book. Ray is set up to be our main protagonist, and it's him that we want to win The Long Walk. In the movie, however, it was anyone's game. I wanted every single walker to live, even the visibly unwell, sociopathic Barkovitch. And because of this, the film became a near two-hour panic attack.

I flinched at every single yell from the soldiers, tensed up each time the boys had even the smallest exchange of negative words, and couldn't help but tear up every single time Ray's mother (Judy Greer) appeared on screen. It also didn't help that Hamill's Major was delightfully evil: cold as ice with a big grin on his face, completely unfazed by the violence happening around him.

All of this is a credit to some of the best acting I've seen all year. Hoffman is a natural leading man, and has the kind of charisma that makes you root for him within his first five minutes on screen. He brings life to the otherwise bleak character of Ray Garraty in a way that I didn't think was possible.

I have to spotlight Wang for embodying the moment in the movie where I started crying and couldn't stop, and Nyot for causing those tears to flow even more (but also making me laugh pretty hard). But it's Jonsson (coming off a franchise-best performance in Alien: Romulus) who cements his status as one of the best actors in all of Hollywood right now.

McVries is effortlessly cool, confident, and is the only one who lets himself sink into the reality of what's happening: rather than let the spectre of death loom over him, he embraces what's happening. He keeps Ray calm and moving, sure, but he slowly and surely takes over as the main protagonist before we can even realize it. I still cared deeply about Ray as the film progressed, and the relationship they build is something truly beautiful (and even comparable to Andy and Red's friendship in The Shawshank Redemption), but Jonsson outshines everyone.

Just go on dancing with me like this forever

As with all adaptations, there are several differences between the novel and the film – but the age-old belief that "the book is always better than the movie" does not apply here. There are several changes from the book that anchor the movie in reality, and make it a deeply haunting affair.

The most noticeable is that of the landscape: a switch from the forests of Maine to the deserted roads of middle America (which Lawrence says had more to do with budget than story). The sweat, the grime, and the slow mental breakdown against a hot sun and a whole lot of nothing really elevates the contest itself, showing how brutal and unfair it actually is, as opposed to walking through the beautiful trees of New England.

It also makes the violence, which the film does not shy away from, that much more unbearable to watch. Mollner makes a few key changes to the story, including Ray's motivation for entering the contest, and swapping out a girlfriend for his worried mother.

Some of the dialogue from the book is also used, and I couldn't help but cry when Jonsson delivered one of the best lines King has ever written: "Just go on dancing with me like this forever, and I'll never tire. We'll scrape our shoe on the stars and hang upside down from the moon."

To the bitter end

Without giving too much away, it's the ending that ties the entire movie together – and makes it better than the book. It's a different ending, it's a better ending, and it's one that will linger in your mind for weeks (and was approved by King himself).

When the credits began to roll, I was a snotty, sobbing mess. The lights came on, but it took me a second to get up and leave the theater. I knew I was going to get on the train home, review those final scenes in my mind, and cry a little more. I knew I was going to tear up every time I thought about it.

The Long Walk is not for the faint of heart, but it is one of the best Stephen King adaptations ever made, and one of the best dystopian sci-fi movies to hit the big screen in a really long time. It's another win for Hunger Games and I Am Legend helmer Francis Lawrence, who demonstrates once again that he understands dystopia like nobody else.

I don't cry much at movies, and for a while I wondered whether I was becoming desensitized, or if it was a side effect of getting older. The Long Walk was like an electric jolt straight to the heart, reminding me that I'm alive, our time is precious, and that we should cherish our loved ones while they're still here. You'll walk out of the theater feeling immensely grateful for your life, but it won't be without the creeping fear that this is what society will be like in 50 or so years. And that's where the true horror comes in.

The Long Walk hits theaters on September 12. For more, check out our list of all the upcoming Stephen King movies and shows.