The Long Walk, a Movie For Hard Times

The Long Walk is a movie which fell under the radar of many horror fans early on. Released this Fall under director Francis Lawrence, who is known previously for The Hunger Games movies, the movie features a fairly respected cast including names like Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Ben Wang and Mark Hamill. It is one of the best thrillers this year and possibly the best Stephen King adaptation ever.

The plot is simple: Fifty young men from an unnamed country in North America are taken to a road, and they are told to walk at a pace of three miles per hour until only one of them is still walking. Anyone who does not keep pace will die, and the winner will be awarded with a large sum of money. From this simple setup, this has become the most poignant story I have seen on screen this year.

While the movie isn’t overly gory for the most part, there are parts of this that can be genuinely heartbreaking to see. This is not something disguised by the movie, indeed, this is emphasized to a very high degree. Even the audio mixing, a normally subtle part of a film, emphasized each individual gunshot as loud and startling. Through this, we see that the normally softened act of killing someone with a firearm is horrific in of itself, and we see that kind of violence through a terrifically realistic lens. 

Many critics will describe The Long Walk as a horror movie, and while this is true, it is important to make a distinction — this is a movie about a very different and very real type of horror, the horror of watching another human being die and not being able to do anything about it. It’s doubtful viewers will be afraid during this movie, more so that they will feel a kind of heartache characteristic of dramatic thrillers. The care taken in regards to each individual character and in making all of the participants in the eponymous Long Walk feel like human beings is something that makes each of their deaths a wondrous discomfort. 

A common flaw in many movies about war and human tragedy is that there is a fine line between making the movie interesting and making evil look cool, and many fall into the latter. However, The Long Walk is something that eschews this distinction entirely, and which I feel like captures the absolute dread of a violent machine you can’t do anything about. There is nothing to glorify here, only the slaughter of young men. Even in resistance, they are cut off from real change and they suffer.

Of course, throughout the movie there is hope. The characters talk about their lives, they have fun, there are even moments which are funny. Even in the absolute misery of the Long Walk, there is joy and a promise that life is worth living, and there is a sense that despite everything, humanity is still the same at its core. Despite all the death around them, they are not alone and they are still able to make meaning out of the horrors they experience.

This is not a movie for everyone, in fact, many audiences will be weeping throughout. I myself cried for over half an hour near the end. However, the reason I am recommending this movie is because of the times we live in — we live in hard times, and we live in times with the most horrid and unthinkable cruelties are commonplace. Part of why films are made is because they help us understand real life in a safe environment, and this is exactly what The Long Walk does. It asks us how we process cruelty. The movie’s answer is simple — we have to be people, and we have to do what we can. 

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