THE LONG WALK (2025)

The Long Walk takes place in an alternate 1970’s post-Vietnam America, where every year 50 teenage boys, each via lottery and personal decision, represents his home state and walks until only one remains as the whole macabre spectacle is televised for all to witness. The winner is granted riches in a time of extreme poverty and mass disenchantment, as well as one wish; a beacon and inspiration for what can be achieved in a time of extreme lack. There are also rules, which I won’t spoil. The Long Walk is likely an allegory for the Vietnam war, during which the world watched too many young men being forced into a nationalistic conflict that got them killed or physically and psychologically scarred. Based on the novel by Stephen King, written during King’s freshman year at the University of Maine and published a decade later under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, it was later released (and first introduced to me) in 1985 as a collection of stories known as The Bachman Books. Interestingly enough, another adaptation from this collection will hit the screen this year, Edgar Wright’s remake of The Running Man (1987), and let’s hope it can keep the pace. King is known for horror (this story included), but his greatest gift, in my opinion, is his skill at expounding on coming of age, its harshest trials and the intricacies of adolescent male bonding. Much like his stories The Body – which inspired Stand By Me (1986) – and IT, it’s the common and specific pressures of becoming a man that forges friendships, and we must not forget that vulnerable boys generally contend most immediately with their often aggressive and toxic male contemporaries as they all grow up, often with violence. King communicates the terror of this tenuously formative time for boys, making or breaking them into men. The narrative focuses on a large gaggle of boys that form an early bond by way of their collective uncertainty and taking the piss, but it’s Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) and Peter McVries (David Jonsson) who are the heart of this story. Both are phenomenal, broadly representing the duality of hate and love and how the extremes gas one’s will to survive. This long walk requires each give everything, and the burgeoning young men use whatever they can to momentarily distract themselves as they persevere, embracing humour, each other and isolation. Director Francis Lawrence – I Am Legend (2007), The Hunger Games (2013-2023) – has put forth a film that doesn’t judge male comradery, aggression and cutthroat competition. Instead, it shows them on the cusp of maturity, failing and fighting, in a dystopian and disillusioned society that will hopefully, someday, not continue to be as timely.

WATCH OR NOT: WATCH

Additional musings: Hopefully there will one day be film adaptation of The Bachman Books’ Roadwork. Rage is off the table thanks to King’s decision to let it go out of print. Google why if you’re unaware of his very sound reasoning.