There are movies you watch, and then there are movies you experience. For me, “The Long Walk” (2025) was the latter.
I walked into a half-filled theater on a Sunday afternoon, and by the time the lights came up in that dark theater, I had tears dripping down my chin and an ache beneath my ribs. My heart physically ached. There is no way to describe it other than saying that this film had worked its way completely under my skin.
“The Long Walk” directed by Francis Lawrence, adapted from the novel by the horror king himself, Steven King. The film is set in a dystopian America in which 50 boys are picked from a voluntary lottery to participate in a contest. They are sent trekking down a never-ending road, told to keep walking until only 1 remains.
Keep a constant pace of 3MPH. Slow down? That’s a warning. Three warnings and you’re out. Step off the pavement? You’ll “get your ticket,” as the Major, played by Mark Hammil, says.
For the one strong enough to survive, he is promised riches beyond imagination, but at what cost?
The film follows Ray Garraty, played by Cooper Hoffman, and his band of situational brothers as they embark on this challenge together. It is the camaraderie that they create that carries you through the film. The age range of the boys is unknown, but their youth is apparent. They should have their whole lives ahead of them, but instead they are met with steaming pavement.
The film allows you to settle into Ray’s world first. He’s confident, but not cocky. We see those first several minutes directly from his point of view. The road, the horizon, the beating sun. Before the film reveals its name by showing you the title card, it does everything it can to gain your trust. It shows you these boys, young and containing multitudes, who are so eager for the road ahead. The film extends its hand out to you, saying, “walk with me” before thrusting you into exactly what you’ve gotten yourself into. That delay sets the tone in a way I have never experienced.
Despite this, jokes ensue. Laughs are had. These boys curse like children who have just discovered what those words are. There are moments where they break out into song, moments of teenage-branded rebellion against the system that has led them to gather together, and moments where they begin to rip apart at the seams. This is not entertainment masking as suffering, it is suffering lived.
Director Francis Lawrence chose to film chronologically, meaning that the exhaustion viewers see depicted was very real. The cast and crew walked 8 to 15 miles every day, their facial hair grew out, and the aches in their feet genuinely affected their gait. It’s one of the most diabolical instances of life imitating art that I have ever seen. I couldn’t get away. The road loomed over me, and I couldn’t escape each Bang as another contestant “got their ticket.” I could barely move my head enough to look away, and closing my eyes felt wrong. No level of denial could downplay what I was witnessing. The score filled my ears too, composed by Jeremiah Fraites. The music breathes in quietly between the footsteps. It isn’t the pounding, militaristic rhythm you might expect from a story about endurance and death – it is delicate, almost reverent. It hums beneath the dialogue like a heartbeat that refuses to give out, reminding you that even in exhaustion, something human remains. This music does not demand your attention; it finds you when you have finally gone still enough to listen. That’s what “The Long Walk” really is about.
There’s a moment towards the end of the film when Ray looks at his friend Pete, played by David Jonsson, and Pete asks, in a tone somehow light despite the atrocities painted on the road behind them, “Wanna walk with me a while?”
Much of the contest was still ahead of them, their fates and tickets not having been punched yet. 50 contestants at the start, and fewer remained, but everything still had a nearly impossible twinge of possibility. Their world didn’t feel like it was approaching its end one step at a time.
Ray answers, “Yeah, yeah I do.”
That line wrecked me. It is simple, but it carries everything. Friendship. Surrender. Defiance. Love. The bone-deep need not to be alone in a world built to break you. When the credits rolled, I stayed unable to move. My face wet, my chest tight, my hands trembling in my lap. The screen went dark, but I could still hear the echo of footsteps – the boys, the road, the silence that followed. There is not a day that goes by in which these boys don’t enter my mind in one way or another.
This is not a film you watch and leave behind. It is one that keeps walking beside you long after the lights come up, asking, quietly, if you will walk with it a while longer.
