The Long Walk is the latest Stephen King adaptation directed by Francis Lawrence. This movie didn’t interest me by concept, as a movie about people walking sounds boring, but however the name of JT Mollner as the writer did. JT Mollner wrote Strange Darling from last year (2024) and after seeing that, I have faith in anything he writes. The director interested me due to his filmography consisting of mainly Hunger Games movies, so seeing him adapt something from Stephen King was a little bit shocking, but I’ll let the movie speak for itself.

Anyway, The Long Walk is about an alternate America where fifty teen boys compete in an annual long walk, where the only way to win is by walking until everyone else is dead. Knowing the concept after watching, it’s kind of obvious why Francis Lawrence chose to direct this, as it’s Hunger Games but walking.

Starting with the positives, the actors can carry this movie with their chemistry alone. It’s believable that they would be friends in real life and their chemistry also helps the emotional parts of this movie. Ben wang is as charismatic as he was in Karate Kid Legends, David Jonsson is as great in this as he was Alien Romulus, and Cooper Hoffman does great as well.

Other than the characters, some of the shots in this movie look great and could be framed. I also love how they did the emotion in this movie, whether it’s the ending or just when a character you enjoy dies. Speaking of the ending, even though Stephen King is known for his amazing stories with bad ending, this movie almost made me shed a tear. The ending of this movie was beautiful and knew when it had to end, it didn’t overstay it’s welcome.

The only thing that I am mixed on, is the writing. This movies writing is amazing but there are some parts where they get political (about their world) in this movie, that felt unnecessary. While there are some parts that work great, some could’ve been cut. But otherwise, this movie is great as I would give it a 4.5/5 and would recommend seeing it in theaters.