The Long Walk Review

The works of Richard Bachman, AKA Stephen King, stand out from King’s other works. If you’re unfamiliar with the story behind Richard Bachman, King created the pseudonym in the late 1970s to avoid flooding the market with his books. King is a very prolific writer and has had a few finished novels in the drawer that didn’t quite fit in with the other works in King’s roster. King’s stories can get dark, but the Bachman stories are on another level entirely; the novels are consistently bleak and disturbing.

They have also, in recent years, been oddly relevant and prescient for today, with subjects as varied as school shootings (Rage), angry white man against the system (Roadwork), reality TV (The Running Man, and to a lesser degree The Long Walk), and even body dysmorphia (Thinner). Time has been kind to the Bachman novels, especially in these turbulent times, where it only feels like a slight push from Bachman’s fiction into an all-too-real world.

Even through the austerity, Stephen King’s voice shines through. If you didn’t know Richard Bachman was King, it wouldn’t take much to convince you that he was – King’s prose is in there, even though the subject matter is not quite like anything in King’s catalogue.

Bachman’s work has seen something of a reassessment in recent years, with not one but two film adaptations in 2025 – Edgar Wright’s upcoming adaptation/remake of The Running Man (which promises to be very different from the Schwarzenegger film), and Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk. This film has been a long time in the making, but the material’s darkness and bleak outlook have proven challenging for many filmmakers who have attempted to adapt the novel.

The best way out is through, as they say, and Lawrence’s film embraces the pessimism and the grim desolation of the novel, and yet there are cracks where the light shines through, to paraphrase a Leonard Cohen song. Even through such devastating darkness, hope refuses to die. While there are a few changes (not many) from the source, The Long Walk, like The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me, is full of the spirit and the prose of King, with rich characterization and dialogue.

There are many adaptations of King’s work that never quite hit the mark as opposed to reading him on the page, instead strip-mining the story but leaving very little else intact. Not so The Long Walk. It has the beat, the cadence, and the emotion that have kept Stephen King in the hearts of many readers and have made him one of the most iconic and beloved American authors.

Be aware, when I say bleak, I mean it. The Long Walk pulls no punches and sugarcoats nothing. King himself has stated that, as a condition to adapting this material, the violence must be as in-your-face and as direct as possible. It would be a disservice to the story otherwise, and we feel every death and every heartbreak.

So many films look away from the violence and make the stakes feel weightless as a result. The Long Walk‘s stakes are very apparent. The film wouldn’t work without those emotions and connections, and at the center of The Long Walk is a friendship for the ages, between Ray Garrity (Cooper Hoffman) and Pete DeVries (David Jonsson).

Both Ray and Pete have their reasons for taking the Long Walk, a competition where 50 boys from each state walk, never going under 3 miles an hour, led by the Major (Mark Hamill). Go under 3 miles, and the walker gets three warnings before they are shot dead. The winner is the last one to walk.

Free thought and speech are discouraged, and the United States has become a cruel country where independent thought has been outlawed, and the people struggle to survive. The winner of the Long Walk gets wealth, and their innermost wish granted, but there are really no winners. These boys are sacrificial lambs to the slaughter, for an indifferent country and government that uses these young men as meat for the grinder.

But it’s on the Walk that friendships are born. The relationships that blossom are beautiful because they are fleeting, and the bonds formed can be broken as quickly as a stumble on the loose gravel, or a rock in the shoe, or a muscle spasm in the leg. Still, Ray and Pete bond on the Walk. And as their companions fall, Ray and Pete share their hopes, their dreams, their ragged histories and losses.

Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson are tremendously great. Their friendship feels real, lovely, and genuine. It reminded me strongly of another friendship in another Stephen King adaptation – The Shawshank Redemption. And while I don’t know what kind of life this film will find in theaters, I know with certainty that it’s the friendship portrayed here that will give this film life beyond the screen.

The Shawshank Redemption wasn’t immediately popular on release; it was discovered on video and cable. I predict that The Long Walk will have a similar life, because like Shawshank, The Long Walk is filled to the brim with powerful emotion and beauty. It is a bleak, harsh, unforgiving world, but the love these two men have for each other is what gives them the will to take each step.

It’s easy to understand why Cooper Hoffman took this part. During one exchange, Ray talks wistfully about his father, and it’s obvious that Hoffman is pulling from a deep reservoir of personal loss and emotion. But Hoffman, like his father before him, uses every bit of his life and his skills as an actor to create something extraordinary.

Hoffman couldn’t get to those places, however, without the graceful support of David Jonsson, who was easily the best thing in last year’s Alien: Romulus. The distance between the two could only be measured in nanometers. If I were talking in awards season speak, I’d say that both Hoffman and Jonsson should receive recognition, but honestly, both performances complement and inform each other so completely that I wouldn’t want to be the judge.

The supporting cast is strong as well – I especially loved Ben Wang’s Hank Olson, who has his own reasons to take the Walk, and we see his optimism slowly but surely turn to despair. But I’m certain we’ll see many of these young actors again – The Long Walk feels like it could be that kind of movie, where in 10 years we will look back at the film and wonder how they got such a cast of stellar performers at their beginnings. Mark Hamill’s Major is enigmatic and cruel, and he gives the boys motivational speeches that feel as empty and soulless as the propaganda that has sent so many young men to war.

Francis Lawrence wisely gets out of the material’s way; this could have been done very differently, but Lawrence directs without flourish or false sentimentality, trusting the story enough to get the audience where it needs to go. JT Mollner’s magnificent script doesn’t stray too far from the source but also plays to the strengths of the actors performing it – Mollner’s Strange Darling last year was a wonderful surprise, and Mollner is a unique talent who knows how to build tension as well as character with each moment.

Mollner even finds humor in the darkness, as King can do. He is surely going to be a voice in the horror genre for a long time to come. Mollner finds the soul of King’s novel and makes it sing.

King wrote The Long Walk early in his career, affected by the young men sent off to Vietnam, never to return. It was important to King that any adaptation of this novel be honest and unflinching. Sadly, The Long Walk feels timelier than ever, and the Bachman books have resonated in ways that King himself may not have expected.

Of all the Bachman novels, The Long Walk is the best one, and Francis Lawrence and JT Mollner give King’s story grace, beauty, and deep emotion. Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson give performances for the ages. This is one of the very best adaptations of Stephen King’s work, a bold statement considering that so many great films have sprung from his novels. But I’d put The Long Walk right next to The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me in that honored, holy place.

This has been an amazing year for the horror genre, and we haven’t even hit October yet. The Long Walk is one of the most devastating, beautiful, and heartbreaking movies of the year. See it in the theater, because it deserves it.

THE LONG WALK REVIEW RATING: 9.5 OUT OF 10

Lionsgate will release The Long Walk in theaters on Friday, September 12, 2025. The film is rated R for strong bloody violence, grisly images, suicide, pervasive language, and sexual references.