AUGUST 29, 2025
GENRE: SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (ADVANCED SCREENING)
I’ve never pinned down an all-time favorite book the way I have for movies (Halloween), albums (Bat out of Hell), sandwiches (Italian) and evil Canadian children (Cathy). But I have a rough idea of the contenders, and I have certainly *read* The Long Walk more than any other novel, so that tends to be my answer when pressed.* I read it for the first time when I was 15 or so, via the Bachman Books, then read it again about two years later, and then I read it several times when I adapted it into a screenplay along with my buddy JB, a bit of personal attachment that is relevant. Not exactly a bias, but I'm certainly invested in a "Hey, did they pull it off?" kind of way that I wouldn't be for any other novel I read before seeing the adaptation (it's usually the other way around for me).
I can't find the whole thing anymore (probably for the best!), but I do recall it was around 200 pages and was more or less a straight transcript in screenplay form, but we added some bits and condensed some of the dialogue exchanges into one chunk. I was only 19 (fitting!) at the time but I was aware that both the rigors of film production and also the demands of cinematic storytelling meant that the book would be hard to film *and* watch as presented on the page, because it’s just an endless walk down a road. Stephen King (né Richard Bachman) could write “hours passed, and three Walkers got their ticket” and then resume a conversation more or less where it had left off prior - that wouldn’t work on screen, so we tried to make it more movie-friendly without changing/losing all that much.
Did we succeed? I don’t know. Partly because all but a handful of pages have been lost to several moves since then, partly because... you know, it was never filmed, obviously. But while I can’t speak for JB, I know I am not as talented a filmmaker as either JT Mollner (Strange Darling) or Francis Lawrence, so it’s safe to say that their movie, while imperfect, almost certainly turned out better than ours would have. And again, while it didn’t all work for me, I know all too well from that experience that the book may be incredible, but it is not as easy to turn into a movie as some of King's others, so its few blemishes are eclipsed by the fact that it exists at all, and that it's pretty damn good on top of that.
For those uninitiated, the story centers on 100 teenaged boys who volunteer for an annual walk that starts in Maine and makes its way down through the rest of New England. But it’s no ordinary stroll; they have to maintain a speed of 4 MPH at all times, and if they drop below that speed they are warned. If they get three warnings, they get “a ticket,” which as we horrifically learn about seven miles down the road from the start line, means the young man will be executed on the spot. The walk continues until all but one Walker has been ticketed, at which point that literal last man standing will receive untold riches.
The novel is a grueling, harrowing journey, one of King’s darkest books in fact. The boys feel compelled to form friendships with their fellow Walkers, but of course, this just means making it harder when they are ticketed (or, as is often the case, trying to help them when they start slowing down even though it’s in their best interest to thin the ranks). Some die from sheer exhaustion, others from bad luck (one poor sod gets diarrhea and can’t pick up his speed fast enough after letting go, dying in his own excrement), and a handful go out in an act of defiance. But what really makes it unsettling, at least for me, is the fact that our heroes eventually grow numb to the violence, barely pausing in their conversations as unnamed Walkers around them meet their end.
The adaptation doesn't quite aim for that level of eventual indifference; outside of the ones that occur during time jumps (it takes place over several days) every death is reacted to with appropriate horror and shock. Presumably due to budgetary and logistic concerns, the number of Walkers is dropped to 50 here, so it makes sense that they treat the majority with the same impact as the first. There are still anonymous deaths, but the film skips a hefty number of them at a surprisingly early point, wiping out over a dozen during a sequence where they have to walk up a steep hill (a harrowing sequence from the book that occurs much earlier here). Then a later point has our hero Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) doze off while walking and learn of several more deaths that occurred as he slept. The movie isn’t even halfway over by the time there are only about a dozen boys left, which means every death always counts. Worse, they get a bit repetitive; several times we see Ray and Pete (David Jonsson from Alien: Romulus) right in front of the camera, trying to maintain their composure as someone is ticketed in the background. Somehow they never get used to it, which may be the point, but since it struck me as one of the most memorable things about the novel, it felt a weird thing to drop.
Here I will note, once again, that this is why I prefer to watch the movie before reading the book, because I stand a much better chance of fully enjoying both as the book will almost certainly be better, anyway. Perhaps this wouldn’t even have bugged me. But I would still take issue with Jonsson and a few others’ casting; not that they’re bad or anything (quite the opposite; on a performance level Jonsson is astounding) but they are all noticeably too old to be playing these teenaged characters. There’s a character named Curly who is barely old enough to qualify, and he’s pretty much the only one played by an actual teen. It’s weird to go from Hoffman playing NBC exec Dick Ebersol around this time last year to someone who is supposed to be 17, and Jonsson is over 30! As with the “numb to death” thing, part of what made the story so horrifying is that these are essentially children, some not even legally able to drive yet, but here they’re all played by adult actors, which diminishes that aspect.
Outside of those two choices, the only other thing that bugged me was the ending, which I won’t spoil other than to say it was changed from the book’s and not to its benefit. Well, not ALL to its benefit - one change legit worked great for me! But after that one change they do another thing that felt more like a studio note, and I dunno. I coulda done without it, is all I’ll say on that matter for now. But if you’re a fellow book fan, just prepare yourself.
Otherwise I think they did a terrific job with what is not an easy story to tell on screen. Watching the core group (Ray, Pete, Olson, Stebbins, etc. - except for Scramm and Percy, every notable character in the book is present here and more or less in line with their original counterparts) bond and hold each other up throughout the story worked like gangbusters, and their ball-busting and camaraderie evoked the best of Stand By Me and even a bit of Shawshank Redemption (think the library or lunch room scenes). And Jonsson isn’t the only one who gives a great performance; in fact they pretty much all do, despite the weird aging up casting they sell the fearlessness that only teenaged boys would still possess.
It also doesn’t hold back on the violence. Apparently King (listed as an executive producer, which isn’t always the case for his adaptations) demanded an R rating, and it is earned. While there are a number of backgrounded or off-screen deaths as mentioned, there are also plenty of them that occasionally seem like the MPA wasn’t really paying much attention. I can only imagine the directors of the Friday the 13th sequels watching this and thinking about their kills - some of which weren’t as graphic as these are to begin with! - being trimmed down to barely a drop while this goes out on a couple thousand screens with no argument. If you’ve read the book, you’ll probably remember a certain character’s throat being harmed? Happy to report its kept intact (albeit slightly modified to use a tool instead of a bare hand).
In fact pretty much everything we see is taken directly from the book, but they do that thing where it might depict an event that happened on the page, but have a different character do it (The Ruins did this brilliantly). So as on the page, someone rushes at the soldiers and tries to take them out, but not the same character who did it in King’s original depiction. And the character of Scramm is MIA, but the sad reveal that he is married and the winner should do something for his wife is handed over to one of the other primary characters. I like this approach, because it keeps veteran readers on their toes, but without going so far off the reservoir that it becomes something to get potentially angry about. Does it matter WHICH character had a wife back home? No, but it matters that these guys will continue looking out for each other even after all but one of them have been executed.
(They also drop the speed to 3 mph, which King has admitted was a mistake on his part the first time around. I actually listened to the book again earlier this year while taking my own daily walks, and I felt pretty slow as I was barely hitting 2 mph or so. I'd be dead instantly in the book, but I think I could last a bit in the movie!)
There’s also some humor. Not a lot (and my favorite crack from the book, when a character quips “OK everyone, take five!” is sadly missing), but the levity is dished out when needed, often in the form of the guys just joshing with one another. That said, Lawrence and Mollner never let you forget how grueling this marathon is; even with the necessary flash forwards (especially in the third act; where it jumps past several dozen miles at one point) you feel how tired and broken these guys are, with some gnarly foot trauma on display to remind you not to try this at home. I got the idea that Lawrence wished he coulda gone harder in his Hunger Games movies (which, as you know, also depict a dystopian world where teens have to kill each other) and was relishing the freedom he had here as opposed to those PG-13 blockbusters.
So overall it works, but fell short of being truly great due to a couple of decisions that sanded down the intensity and harshness of the book. I’m sure they were unable to cast actual teens because of labor laws (I doubt this was a fun shoot for anyone except maybe Mark Hamill as the Major, who gets to sit in a jeep and bark his lines while the rest of the actors are constantly walking alongside an endlessly moving camera that they needed to be mindful of), but certainly the casting folks could have tried a little harder to find ones that at least LOOKED like teens, no? Still, as an adaptation of what is a tough sell to both audiences and executives, it’s remarkably faithful and checks off most of the boxes, and considering how long it took to get to the screen (Romero, Darabont, Overdal, and probably more have all come and gone over 30 years) the fact that they even made it at all counts as a win. That it’s an upper tier example of a King adaptation is just icing on the cake.
What say you?
*other ones: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Dark Tower (as a whole), and Sphere. All of which became middling movies. Long Walk is the first one I didn't walk out somewhat or mostly crushed!
PLEASE, GO ON...