[Buy the book this film is based on here]
Read time: 7 minutes
Last night, I saw the screen adaptation of Stephen King’s The Long Walk. While I read the book years ago, it’s one of those novels that I remember the plot and themes of, but not many of the deeper details. I knew what was coming and still cried all the way through this film. I’m also a bit scared of the social impact it may inadvertently have. I’ve picked up a new copy of the book to get into, but here I’m just going to give a quick rundown of my thoughts on the film and the one thing I remember quite clearly from the book–its ending. As a result, this post may not make much sense unless you’ve consumed both bits of media–and if you have, welcome!
Usually I’m impolite about spoilers, but this film came out less than a week ago and is incredibly popular so I’m going to talk around them this time. (Although we can talk straight through them in the comments, if you want.) Basically, the plot of both the movie and the book revolves around a economically failed, dystopic, bloodthirsty nation where one of the biggest aspirations is to be one of 50 boys in a competition to see who can walk the longest. The rules are simple–keep walking, no matter what, at a speed of 3 mph or more, until only one competitor is left. The consequences are deadly–stop moving or break a rule at any time and you’ll get a warning. Get three warnings and you’ll “get your ticket” and be executed by one of the soldiers keeping pace with the walk in a tank. The winner gets unimaginable riches and the granting of one wish, limited only by his imagination.
King initially wrote this when he was a teen himself as a commentary on the Vietnam War and what it was doing to a generation of neglected, angry young men who couldn’t see a future for themselves due to the state of the world. Young men in the USA and many other places seem to be at a similar psychological impasse in 2025. As a result, this is an even rougher watch than expected.
The young men in The Long Walk are doing their best to survive in a system that demands self-punishment, hopeless sacrifice, isolation and barbarity. Yet in the face of state-sanctioned toxic masculinity, some of them rebel. They form friendships and alliances. They help each other survive, even when it lessens their own chance of survival. They lift each other up and vow to carry each other’s legacies. Even though there’s no happy ending in sight, they walk towards their doom arm-in-arm, determined to become more than what their broken society dictates, if only for a moment.
The premise is unsettling, but most of the film is just walking and talking. In different hands, this could have gone horribly wrong, but the performances are what make this film. I often think about the emotional difficulties of being a man or teen boy right now, and fear the inevitability of the resulting turmoil being taken out on the lives and bodies of women. It’s interesting to see a bleak, sad, horrifically violent film about socialized masculinity that directs none of its vitriol towards women and all of it at patriarchal, authoritarian men. It’s lovely to see how sweet and charming some of these young men are, even in the midst of horror. David Jonsson, Cooper Hoffman, Ben Wang and Tut Nyuot all put in incredible work as the central group of Walkers–inspirational, steadfast, witty and sweet by turns. Jonsson is especially impressive, taking what could have been a pretty magical negro and making him a living breathing nuanced guy(with a very weird accent, but I don’t have the energy to stand on my Black-Brits-can’t-do-Black-American-accents soapbox right now.) Also, if you needed any more evidence that the whole world is topsy-turvy right now, the fact that Stephen King isn’t at fault for this near-magical negro should convince you. (In the book, Jonsson’s character Pete is described as a white kid. Any missteps are the fault of the casting director, here.) Even the more villainous boys aren’t without sympathy–they’re just young and dumb, in a situation where consequences far outweigh transgressions.
It’s a bleak, sad, horrifically violent film made with a lot of intention and impact. I hated what I was seeing while watching it, but thought it was doing a good job of being a social parable right up until the ending. For me, the last two minutes ruin the film. The book’s ending was bleak and ambiguous and meaningful. The amended story ending in the film is bleak, decisive and possibly very dangerous. Given the events in the US over the last week, I’m very surprised this was released without some sort of pre-show warning.
Again, I won’t spoil it for you but for me the penultimate scene ruined all of the foundations laid by a particular character throughout the film and unwittingly reinforced the lesson the bad guys were trying to teach. The film says something very different about all the proceeding violence and horror than the book does, but I don’t think the change is an improvement.
But that said, I get why the change was made. Many of us are past believing that kindness, love and community are effectives modes of living, thanks to the social changes of the post-pandemic years and a steadily darkening view of the world. If I was the age of the main characters depicted in this film, I might think that the ending of this film was modeling a just way of interacting with authoritarianism.
And that’s what worries me. It’s reasonable and justifiable, but not necessarily just. The ending is too pat, too binary, too spiteful, too unnuanced, and again–it undoes all of the groundwork built throughout the film for the last character left standing. It only makes a little sense as an individual act of story–but even then it’s one swift moment of vindication that seems to mean nothing to the larger world this movie goes to great pains to build despite taking place largely on one state highway. The ambiguous Aesop that King ended the original book with reappears too late in the film version to be useful or have any real meaning, and I left the theater feeling as though all the violence and death and sadness I’d been witnessing for hours meant absolutely nothing.
Then again, maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s what will get people talking, and thinking, and reassessing their need for superiority–whether through physical violence, performative goodness, or other kinds of dominance–in terms of how helpful that actually is for positive social change.(In my opinion, it isn’t at all, despite how it feels)
There’s also the fact that, in a made-up dystopia where most of the details of the evil overlords’ beliefs are kept vague (although there is a subplot about books that make things much clearer if you’ve read the ones mentioned), almost anyone could watch this from their bubble and feel like it’s speaking to their side. If the wrong person of any political stance watches this, they’re going to pick up a message that I don’t think the filmmakers intended–I hope.
I guess I’m equal parts hopeful that The Long Walk will inspire good cultural conversations and worried that it will inspire horrible violence.
Reading the book again may not help, but it will give me something to do to pass the time while we all wait and see.
Thanks for reading, beautiful people. Coming back to the idea of good cultural conversation–I really want to hear what you think of this one. Share what you think in the comments, please.
(For legal reasons I have to tell you that purchasing something from a link on this blog means I get paid. Now, go and read something good! Peace!)
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