US Edition'The Long Walk' Review: Marching Into America's Heart of Darkness
Directed by Francis Lawrence, the film adapts Stephen King's 1979 novel about 50 teens forced into a deadly, televised 3 mph endurance march in dystopian America.
- The Long Walk, a 1979 Stephen King novella under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, opens as a movie nationwide on September 12, 2025, directed by Francis Lawrence and starring Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson.
- The film adapts a dystopian story where 50 boys, one from each state, are chosen by lottery to march continuously at 3 mph or face execution by rifle, reflecting a totalitarian America weakened by civil war and social decay.
- The boys bond amid the ordeal, led by a militaristic overseer called The Major, menacingly portrayed by Mark Hamill, with the movie emphasizing brutal deaths, close-up violence, and cynical government control as central themes.
- Rated R for strong bloody violence, pervasive language, grisly images, suicide, and sexual references, the film runs 1:48 and includes a script by JT Mollner, who also wrote 2024's Strange Darling; King insisted on the rating to maintain story integrity.
- The Long Walk challenges viewers with its bleak portrayal of survival as televised sport, highlighting societal decline and the disturbing spectacle of sacrificing youth for control and entertainment in a near-future America.
11 Articles
11 Articles
In a gloomy future, a regime forces America's youth into a deadly game: the march for life and death. Hundred young people start, only one is allowed to survive. Those who fall short of the pace die. In the middle of it: Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman), who risks everything to be the last to remain. Read here our cinema criticism of the Stephen King film "The Long Walk – Death March". In a post-war America, 50 young men who have qualified for the c…
The Detroit News
'The Long Walk' review: Marching into America's heart of darkness
This harsh Stephen King adaptation is based on the author's 1979 novel.
Tearsy drama about young men marching a deadly march - after an early work by Stephen King.
‘The Long Walk’ Reviews Are Very Positive — 78 on MC, 96% on RT — World of Reel
After more than two weeks of festival hopping—from Venice to Toronto—I’m finally ready to crash in my own bed. That’s 50+ movies down, with only a handful of walkouts, and I’ll be recapping the best of what I’ve seen very soon. Having been away, I still need to catch up on a few missed films, including Darren Aronofsky’s “Caught Stealing” and Francis Lawrence’s “The Long Walk,” which hits theaters this Friday. Reviews for “The Long Walk” are imp…
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Bias Distribution
- 40% of the sources are Center, 40% of the sources lean Right
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