The Long Walk: A Thoughtful Approach to a Stephen King Adaptation

The most recent Stephen King adaptation, The Long Walk, has maybe the most fascinating page-to-screen story you could think of. Originally published in 1979 under Stephen King’s pen name, Richard Bachman, The Long Walk is highly influential on a number of stories about totalitarian games of death that followed, notably the Japanese novel Battle Royale, which was quickly adapted into the legendary film of the same name in 2000. The irony here is that The Long Walk has struggled to be adapted into a film itself. 

All the way back in 1988, George Romero tried and failed to get an adaptation off the ground. In 2007, Frank Darabont acquired the rights for an adaptation that never came to pass. In 2019, horror director André Øvredal would sign on for another adaptation that never made it across the finish line. The fact of the matter is that The Long Walk is difficult to adapt into a film because of its brutal simplicity: Walk, or die. The complexity of King’s novel comes from the devices literature can employ that films must translate onto the screen in different ways, particularly character psychology.

So, The Long Walk has the burden of being an influence on a huge number of popular books and films, with arguably the most famous of them being the Hunger Games franchise (a franchise produced by Lionsgate, the company distributing The Long Walk). That’s 46 years in which other films have explored similar ideas, placing this adaptation into a potentially nasty predicament: When so many other stories inspired by your story already exist, what is left for an adaptation of that story now? In an interesting twist, this first adaptation of The Long Walk is directed by Francis Lawrence—the filmmaker behind every Hunger Games movie since 2013. One of the directors who has most benefited from the influence of the novel The Long Walk is the man in charge of bringing it to life onscreen for the first time.

Frankly, I’m thrilled Francis Lawrence is the person getting to adapt The Long Walk into a film for the first time. Few directors are as personally aware of this corner of dystopian fiction as Lawrence, and his experience allows The Long Walk to carve out its own identity. And Lawrence, alongside screenwriter JT Mollner, wisely zeroes in on the simplicity of the film’s source material while making (mostly) minor changes to the material in the name of making the story cinematic. You will not mistake The Long Walk for one of Lawrence’s Hunger Games films, even if they share similar themes.

Right off the bat, this adaptation refuses to fully fill in the exact history of its own world. Through details in the film’s production design and various pieces of dialogue, The Long Walk appears to take place in an alternate timeline in which the United States suffered a massive war that enabled a fascist government to take total control. In this timeline, the United States has created an annual game to “inspire” its citizens, the titular Long Walk. Young men can enter a lottery to join the Long Walk, with 50 chosen to play, each from one of the 50 states of America. The rules are chillingly simple: all contestants must walk until they can no longer move forward. If you cannot maintain a walking speed of 3 miles per hour, you get a warning. If you get three warnings, armed soldiers will kill you on the spot. If you leave the paved road where the walk takes place, you are instantly shot. Water and food are provided, but stopping to use the bathroom is a major liability (which is, gruesomely, demonstrated within the film). The last man alive wins.

Why would anyone willingly participate in this? There’s a massive cash prize, plus the government will grant you one wish, within fascist limits. That’s how Raymond Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) finds himself participating, much to the understandable worry of his mother, Ginnie (Judy Greer). For a competition of death, Raymond manages to befriend a number of other contestants, including Peter McVries (David Jonsson), Arthur Baker (Tut Nyuot), Hank Olson (Ben Wang), and Collie Parker (Joshua Odjick). Other contestants are less friendly, like the antisocial Gary Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer) and the enigmatic Stebbins (Garrett Wareing). Under the supervision of a cruel military man, The Major (Mark Hamill), hours will stretch into days to see who will win the Long Walk.

Lawrence has specialized in pushing the PG-13 ratings as far as he can in his adaptations of The Hunger Games, but The Long Walk's R-rating is put to full effect in its depiction of the horrors of the competition. The first young man to lose the Long Walk demonstrates this difference. Not only do you see him take a bullet to the head, the exit wound rips his jaw open, the camera lingering for a few seconds before a smash cut to the best late-film title card drop of 2025 so far. To the credit of Lawrence, most of the deaths are far less gratuitous, and many don’t even directly happen on camera. Instead, Lawrence uses other tools to build tension, like conversations between the two lead characters, Raymond and Peter, as they coldly muse on the horror of getting used to the gunfire and what it means to become comfortable seeing death all around you. This is a game designed to strip away the humanity of others. Can they maintain their souls to make a wish that’ll change people’s lives for the better? 

These sorts of moral discussions are what make up the bulk of the film’s dialogue, and it’s impressive how it rarely feels distracting or didactic within the context of the film itself. These young men have every reason to ask these questions of each other and their situation—and Lawrence and Mollner smartly expand this ethical quandary to the humanity of those watching the Long Walk. The event is televised, and locals in the area are allowed to stand by the side of the road and watch. While the contestants despise their trial becoming a spectator sport, what truly separates those who watch from those who participate? Everyone wants to be in the Long Walk despite its obviously oppressive horrors. Are these ghoulish figures watching for a moment of schadenfreude, or with envious eyes at those who’ve received a chance to change their lives?

This is not an empty sentiment simply discussed by the characters within the story; Mollner’s script lends as much humanity to as many characters as it can manage. The most loathsome contestant, Gary Barkovitch, has all of the trademarks of a borderline-sociopathic bully, an archetype in Stephen King’s novels. Where Barkovitch transcends other characters like him is in Charlie Plummer’s desperately manic performance and the cruel realization Barkovitch is as scared as the rest of the contestants. Alongside Plummer, Lawrence cultivates an incredible ensemble of young actors. Hoffman ably plays Raymond, the character offering our primary view into the Long Walk, conveying a layered backstory that allows for a gut-wrenching supporting performance from Judy Greer as his mother. And as Peter, David Jonsson is a star in the making, not only giving a masterful performance but also effortlessly imbuing the conversations between the boys with a soulful resonance. Jonsson is one of those rare actors who elevates those around him, with other actors delivering stronger performances in their scenes with him. He draws out the best in everyone, not only as an actor, but as a character too.

The only character who feels flat is Mark Hamill as The Major. This does feel like a purposeful decision considering he’s the face of a dystopian regime, but even then it’s difficult to know exactly what his role within this fascist organization is. This blankness is made even more puzzling by how directly connected The Major is to not one, but two different contestants’ backstories. The Long Walk attempts to position The Major as both a character and a symbol to mixed results.

Aside from The Major, the other characters come alive onscreen, in no small part thanks to the confident and subtle framing in Lawrence’s filmmaking. This is a movie about people walking forward on a road. There’s not a lot of room for hyper-flashy camera moves or bombastic scale—and indeed, The Long Walk’s hollowed-out vision of the United States is visually sparse. While some of Lawrence’s visual signatures are still present in The Long Walk, especially his eye for filming landscapes, he wisely lets mediums and close-ups on great actors do as much of the work as possible.

Where the film stumbles is its ending. Rather than tying together the major themes and narratives introduced, the conclusion runs counter to the most interesting moral discussions within the film. It’s a move that feels less like a movie interrogating its own themes and more a result of modifying the end of the book into a more “cinematic” form. There is a beautifully haunting openness of the last few shots, but the ending is undoubtedly the sloppiest part of the film.

If The Long Walk had aced its ending, this would easily be in the upper echelon of the greatest films based on Stephen King’s writing. Instead, The Long Walk’s ending downgrades its status into being one of my favorite King adaptations of the last 10 years. Francis Lawrence has thoroughly demonstrated that despite The Long Walk being over four decades late to the party inspired by its legacy, a thoughtful approach to a book adaptation is always the best way to make sure the soul of that book survives onto the screen. I only wish that this thoughtfulness had been infused into all of the movie instead of most of it.

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