The Long Walk

No Golden Wonders

The Long Walk
Directed by Francis Lawrence
USA 2025
Lionsgate
UK cinema release print

Warning: I originally intended to write this review without spoilers but, so many thick headed websites have completely failed to catch on to anything but the lowest common denominator, surface interpretation of the ending that I’m going to have to address it here in a special spoiler section at the end... so don’t read past that if you don’t want to know. Watch the movie first and then, maybe, come back to me. 

I first read The Long Walk in a collection of four novels called The Bachman Books back in 1985. I would have been 17 years old and I remember thinking to myself that, now that Richard Bachman had just been outed as being a pen name of Stephen King, then somebody’s bound to make this one into a movie soon, right? It was a nice little story and I knew it would surely lend itself to a decent, cinematic interpretation.

Well, it looks like I had to wait 40 years for that to happen but it’s finally here. And I was already going to see this but, about a month ago, I was fortunate enough to be sitting in a screening of a movie at FrightFest (I forget which one), when they did a sneak preview of the first reel of this movie. Basically the first 22 minutes or so... up to and including the first ‘kill’ of the movie. Bad for the movie this preview played with because, it blew the other movie out of the water. So I was definitely up for seeing this as soon as it hit my local cinema.

And, yes, the wait was worth it because director Francis Lawrence has brought one of the year’s best movies to the screen. It deviates very slightly from what I can remember of the novel but, it makes a beautiful companion piece and the ending, which people seem to be almost deliberately misinterpreting on professional websites, is absolutely brilliant. I mean, come on guys... sometimes a film isn’t about what’s immediately on the surface. I’ll get to that in a minute.

Okay, so the basic premise of The Long Walk is this. In a dystopian future, young male adults all sign up for The Long Walk once a year and, by lottery, 50 people are selected. It’s a public demonstration of giving a devastated population a regard for a good work ethic and to give people a chance of hope, if they happen to survive. They then have to walk for as long as they can, not letting their speed drop below three miles an hour over a number of days. If they drop the speed they are given a ten second warning, then two more whereby, if they still can’t carry on at that speed (due to thier foot being broken or some other issue, plus of course exhaustion), they are shot in the head. When there is only one survivor left, the walk stops and they are given a huge, life changing cash prize and are granted one wish. 

The film follows the walkers (not the crisps) as they talk and discuss and just walk for almost two hours of movie, periodically getting shot dead and going through all kinds of harsh weather without once being allowed to rest. 

There are two male leads in this. Cooper Hoffman (son of Philip Seymour) plays Raymond Garraty, contestant number 47 and the always brilliant David Jonsson plays Peter McVries, contestant number 23, with the film focussing on their growing friendship and revealing background on their characters as the walk progresses. Egged on by the human representation of the villainy of the piece, The Major, played chillingly by the great Mark Hamill.

And it’s brilliant and, maybe not quite brutal as many critics have called it but certainly a little gruelling (and occasionally gory, such as a scene involving some tank tracks from the vehicles which constantly follow the walkers, carrying the military who are going to pop out and shoot them dead when the time comes). The whole thing is very suspenseful and I can’t help but think that Alfred Hitchcock would even have appreciated this one, to an extent. 

All this and a really great score by composer Jeremiah Fraites which helps build the tension nicely, using almost minimalist ostinatos interspersed with beautiful, poignant melodies at key points... so of course there’s no proper CD release of this at time of writing. And then there’s the ending...

Okay, this is spoilers now, don’t read past here until you’ve seen the movie...

The final two left in the walk by the end of the tale are Garraty and McVries, who have built a solid friendship and are moved by each other’s stories of why they want to win the money and the wish for and what they would do with said wish once they get it. Garraty wants to ask for one of the carbines the military are carrying as his wish, so he can shoot The Major dead there and then because of something which has happened to him in his past. So McVries deliberately stops so Garraty can win but, Garraty goes back for him and gets him moving again, with the two of them both on their final warning (next stop is instant death)... and once Garraty gets McVries interested in carrying on, he lets him get ahead and just stops so that McVries can win... without him at first realising what has happened. So he makes Garraty’s wish come true, gets the carbine and kills The Major for him. Then, with the crowd of spectators and all the military just suddenly vanished for no apparent reason, he just carries on walking into the sunset (so to speak). And people have been reporting this as some kind of demonstration that Garraty is the one actually left standing. 

Because that’s what they see without thinking about why they are seeing the ending done in this poetic, almost dream like manner, I guess. 

Um... nope. 

I don’t think McVries survived at all. It’s made pretty clear that if he kills the major, he’ll be shot dead by the military looking on in front of the huge crowd of walk supporters gathered to see the finish. And then they just all are suddenly not there? No, I think it’s obvious by this point that McVries is already dead and this is what happened in his dead mind’s view of events. I think that he either didn’t get successfully saved by Garraty when he tried to sacrifice himself or... maybe he did but as soon as he killed The Major he was shot dead too. He may not realise it yet but, either way, he’s dead. It’s the only explanation for the way the last shot of the movie plays out, I reckon.

Does this make The Long Walk this year’s Saint Maud (reviewed here) in terms of ending interpretations... well, yeah, maybe. I don’t know why people aren’t picking up on this stuff because, to me it’s obvious but, either way, there are no happy endings here. The film is a relentless machine of suspense and so earns my respect and admiration, with that dream state ending just being the cherry on top of the cake, as far as I’m concerned. 

And if that isn’t a recommendation for The Long Walk then I don’t know what is. This one is absolutely phenomenal and I hope it does huge at the box office (although my local Cineworld stupidly showed it in the smallest screen they had... that’s just silly). Definitely catch this one with a cinema full of people... you will, eventually, hear more than just a pin drop.