Scamper from THE LONG WALK
WAKING WALKING || SPOILERS AHEAD || HAVE WE SEEN THIS BEFORE? || SIMILAR DIFFERENCES || CELLULOID BLUNDERING || INELEGANT
ENDING
Mistakes Were Made Along the Way . . .
My review of THE LONG WALK
4/10
WAKING WALKING
I could see why it took decades to make a feature film of one of Stephen King’s earliest stories. Although from what I’ve seen, his novel The Long Walk was drafted at roughly the same time as his first published novel, Carrie, it was among the works he later released under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. It was collected with other stories in a large tome call The Bachman Books, where it should have remained.
SPOILERS AHEAD
The premise is simple, and now familiar. A contest with a glorious prize for the winner, in a pool of contestants drawn from a society with few other options. Except there is one catch: the “winners” are also “survivors”.
HAVE WE SEEN THIS BEFORE?
Maybe the book, released in 1979, inspired copycat tales. Here, anyone not keeping a walking pace of at least 3mph will receive a loud audio warning from the gun-pointing soldiers riding on the military vehicles keeping pace. A few seconds later a second warning sounds. Since each participant is given a number, it comes off as “Number 42, this is your second warning!”
There is a third warning. The fourth is blast of bullets through the head.
Sound familiar? It should if you’ve seen the wildly twisted film BATTLE ROYALE (2000). If you have not seen that dark Japanese thriller with enough campy violence to make Tarantino squirm, you should1. But the premise is similar, however here in BR with a single class of randomly selected high school students. It’s a fight to the death where cooperation up to a point is key, and those who can’t keep up with the competitive nature of the game are brutally expedited in a different — yet familiar — way.
In 2008 author Suzanne Collins, a writer for the Nickelodeon network, released a critical and financial success with her violent Y.A. novel The Hunger Games, made a few years later into a movie and subsequent sequels and a prequel (the second prequel will be released next year). It also has the main character (played in the movie by the lovely Jennifer Lawrence) named Katniss Everdeen. In the Bachman book (and the movie here reviewed) one character is named Harkness (he’s #49 in the walking competition). The similarity is superficial, yet to me not accidental.
SIMILAR DIFFERENCES
While Collins’ book has 24 participants most years, and 48 in rare years, the King/Bachman work has 100, or 2 from each state. Central themes of trauma, survival of trauma, retribution and survival run through both works. Both also have very authoritarian governments and are set outside existing timelines.
Each are set in a dystopian society with psychological control and an impoverished population willing to compete to their death and kill to rid themselves of their prosaic existence. Both are done for national entertainment and as a structure of political control.
Yet Collins has never cited King/Bachman as inspiration, while King himself acknowledged The Hunger Games as an homage2.
To further tease out the parallels here, the director also directed 4 of the films in the franchise of THE HUNGER GAMES, with a 5th out next year.
CELLULOID BLUNDERING
It is apparent when the participants gather there are not 100 participants, and not even 50, as the movie version seems to imply. There are nowhere near enough actors at the starting stage. At several points during the walk, participants — especially in the last 20 minutes — who fall behind are not called out on the military speaker system, and are just shot without warning. This seems like an entirely amateurish miss. Except if you’re paying attention, it happens a few times. Inconsistency is one of the most damning aspects of cinema. Politician Lincoln Chaffe wrote “Trust is built with consistency”. I am lenient enough to give a mulligan, but after the 3rd time it just becomes morose.
INELEGANT ENDING
I’ll also take issue with the characters, who are supposed to walk continuously, and decide to utilize a great portion of their energy, thus their breath and breathing, talking damn near nonstop. Yeah, there’d be no motivations revealed, no story told, no drama or shit-talking among the characters if everyone did just what I would do and shut the fuck up. But which one is more realistic?
In the Sept. 11, 2025 New York Times review of the film by Jeannette Catsoulis3 pointed out other problems with the movie, and that article is worthy of a 3 to 4 minute read. But most commentators I’ve seen on aggregate sites point out the ending is either sloppy or ambiguous or a let down. Throughout the viewing, it looked to me like the budget was spurious, the desire to make something great nonexistent, and the best people for the job — despite some great acting performances — were asleep at the wheel. Or, here, forgot to tie their shoes and tripped during their own long walks.
Skip this one.
*** *** ***
So, what do you think? Leave a comment below.
Agree? Disagree? Have a different perspective? Leave a comment below.
| Before posting comments, please take a moment to see our > > Posting Rules < < . Basically, they say “don’t be a fucking asshole, asshole!” |
|
header image c. 2025 https://screenrant.com/the-long-walk-2025-movie-stephen-king-images/; used WOP
|
- He considers it one of his faves. See https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/quentin-tarantino-favorite-movies/ ↵
- https://screenrant.com/the-long-walk-hunger-games-comparison-not-avoid/#:~:text=The%20Long%20Walk%20is%20not,path%20forward%20for%20the%20franchise and also see https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/45643/the-long-walk-vs-the-hunger-games#:~:text=good%20idea%20:)-,user62892,Add%20a%20comment ↵
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/movies/the-long-walk-review.html ↵
