The Long Walk (Francis Lawrence, 2025, USA)

One of the more interesting surprises of 2025, The Long Walk is a Stephen King adaptation that is surprisingly faithful to its 1970s source material (among the first novels King ever wrote) while also standing on its own. Of the challenges with adapting King is that some literal adaptations of his stories simply are not cinematic enough. At the same time, attempts to stray too far from the source material have resulted in a number of failed ‘adaptations’ (famously The Dark Tower). Director Francis Lawrence and writer JT Mollner have struck a nice balance between King-ness and originality.

Retaining the period dystopian setting and general premise of the original novel, Mollner’s script notably places the relationship between the two central characters - Ray Garrity and Peter McVries - at the heart of the story. The bond between these two young men forms the emotional background of the story, and it helps that they are played by two rising actors - Cooper Hoffmann and David Jonsson. Cooper Hoffmann has an everyman quality - he doesn’t look like the typical ‘TikTok’ star foisted upon Gen Z. Jonsson, hot off the success of Alien: Romulus, manages to be convincing as an American southerner despite some quirkiness with his accent.

The Long Walk in novel form is not particularly cinematic, so it is a testament to Francis Lawrence and JT Mollner that they are able to keep the film feeling dynamic throughout its 90+ minute runtime. They also deserve praise for keeping true to the source material with a hard-R rating (given Lawrence’s Hunger Games pedigree, there was a lot of trepidation that this would lean more heavily into the YA aspects of the original novel and neuter the intense violence). Overall, The Long Walk is not perfect but marks a welcome improvement in Stephen King adaptations.

7/10