Narratively, The Long Walk could be compared to a more boring version of The Hunger Games, where young men walk and walk until there’s just one alive. The movie itself is a slog, too: Filled with death, blood and profanity, The Long Walk saves its most wicked punch for the last.
Step.
It’s not so hard. Most of us took our first step before we even remember. It’s said that the average person will walk around 75,000 to 100,000 miles in a lifetime. We walk so much that we scarcely even think about it.
Step.
Unless you’re one of the chosen. The lucky.
Step.
The participants in the Long Walk.
Step.
Ray Garraty thinks about it. He’s thought about it for years now. He and his mom need money desperately—just like the rest of the country.
Step.
It’s been years since the war, but the United States never really bounced back. People are destitute. Starving. Hopeless. The Long Walk, they say, was created to give a little hope. Build a little backbone. Inspire a little old-fashioned patriotism. Why, if those young men can walk that long, maybe I can work a little harder, goes the theory. I can do my part to make the country better.
Step.
And the winner of the Long Walk? They’ll take home more money than they can count. Security for their families. They even get an extra-special wish. They can’t wish to upend the government, of course. But anything within reason? A meet-and-greet with the President? An elephant as a pet? No problem.
Step.
So Garraty and thousands of other young men—no more than boys, really—put their names into the Long Walk lottery, hoping, praying to land a coveted spot. One spot of 50, a representative from every state. They enter even though—
Step.
—the odds are long. The competition is tough. And if you’re not the last man walking at the end, that means you’re dead.
Step.
Walk too slowly, you’re dead.
Step.
Go off the road, you’re dead.
Step.
It doesn’t matter if you suffer a crippling cramp or a change of heart. You’ve got to keep walking.
…
You’ve got to keep walking!
…
Please.
[Warning: Spoilers are contained in the following sections.]
The Long Walk introduces us to a grim contest in a bleak world. Those who participate know the score. They know only one of them will survive. But in spite of that blade hanging over their heads—or, perhaps, because of it—many participants take part with one eye on the prize, and the other on their newfound companions.
“Just want to walk and maybe make some friends,” Arthur Baker says at the outset. He quickly falls in with Garraty and two other walkers: Peter McVries and Hank Olson. They take to calling themselves the “Musketeers” (even though there’s four of them, not three), and they help each other as much as they can along the way. Even when the walk wears on and the odds grow ever more in their favor, we never see an indication that any of them would ever turn on each other. And sometimes, they risk their own lives to encourage and support (sometimes literally) their friends.
Garraty forms a particularly strong bond with McVriesr. And together, the two of them eventually constitute the moral core of the walkers.
Garraty gives his own rations to a walker who needs help. He exhorts other walkers as much as he can. He even comforts the Walk’s most psychopathic participant when it’s clear the guy just, honestly, needs a friend.
But even though Garraty seems to be the kindest person on the walk, he’s jaded, too. He nurses an understandable, even righteous, hatred for the system and people who make the Long Walk inevitable. And he’s disgusted by the people on the side of the road, watching them pass. He thinks of them as vultures.
But his friend, McVries, sees them as fathers, mothers, children. They may have been brainwashed to accept the Walk, McVries acknowledges. But deep inside, they’re still people—no more, no less—who love their families and, if given the chance, might surprise you with their own good qualities.
McVries, too, has been beaten around by life. He bears a nasty scar on his face as proof. But McVries decided to “find the light in all this ‘f—ng darkness.” To be a positive force in a negative world. He encourages Garraty and his other Walkers to embrace the good, unforgettable moments on this horrific walk of death. And McVries encourages Garraty to shake his own darkness and lean into something better. “If you make this,” McVries tells him, referring to the end of the walk, “I suggest you choose love.”
Garraty’s father is dead now. But Garraty recalls him as a man of deep principle and unwavering conviction. In flashback, we see evidence of that conviction.
Arthur, one of the Musketeers, is a Christian. He clutches what appears to be a small Bible before the Walk begins, and he wears a cross around his neck. (We later learn that the necklace belongs to his grandmother.) And when he believes his own walk is nearing its end, he tells his friends that he’s “going home.”
The movie’s dystopian U.S. government also marshals religion to serve its own purposes. A radio announcer encourages listeners to pray for the “poor” and “despised.” The Major, the military figure in charge of the Long Walk, invokes God in some of his speeches. A few small churches dot the landscape, and a black-clad woman stands in the door of one of them as she watches the walkers pass.
We hear references to banned books, including those by the atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the Danish theologian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Someone says, “Rich men don’t enter the kingdom of heaven.”
The Long Walk takes place in Garraty’s home state. And as the walkers march through one small town, a girl holds a sign in support of Garraty—telling the world that she “loves” him. Fellow walkers chide Garraty about the fact that the girl looks like she’s just about 14 years old.
Garraty, McVries and others talk about whether they have girlfriends or not. McVries says, definitively, that he does not—eyeing Garraty a little longer than is necessary. He’s jokingly accused of being gay, an accusation McVries does not answer. (The film stops its speculations there, but Stephen King’s original novel also hints that the character may have same-sex leanings.)
An effeminate character gets bullied and harassed by another walker, who also makes gross, sexually charged allusions about the character’s mother. Hank Olson, one of the Walk’s “Musketeers,” says that he plans to use his wish to spend time with “10 naked women.” This leads to a long debate over whether it would make more sense to just pay 10 women to undress from the contestant’s monetary winnings.
Almost every character dies in The Long Walk. None die peacefully.
Most are shot in the head from near point-blank range. Bullets tear through skin and bone in a display of cinematic realism: I’ve seen far more bloody, more grotesque deaths onscreen, but the clinical destruction we witness here makes these executions—many of which we see in close proximity—feel far more disturbing.
Others are not so lucky. Characters who try to run away get gunned down before escaping. Anyone who tries to attack or disarm a soldier is shot and left to bleed out—as a warning to the others, we’re told. (We see one such victim left behind, begging for someone to help him.) Other walkers kill themselves or try to. One grabs a rifle and shoots himself in the head (bleeding from other gunshot wounds as he does so). Another walker stabs himself repeatedly in the neck. And, of course, many simply stop walking, knowing full well that their walk is over.
A walker apparently snaps his ankle and walks for hours on his folded-over foot. A crow corpse looks as though it’s been crucified on a wire fence. In flashback, a man is executed, offscreen, for disobeying the government. A few walkers die because of their own rebelling bodies: One collapses while foaming at the mouth. Another suffers some sort of internal hemorrhage, and he takes his last steps bleeding (in the darkness) from his nose and mouth. Someone brags that he’ll “dance on the graves” of his fellow walkers. We hear how McVries got his scars.
Two participants get into a physical fight while walking: One dies via gunshot wound; the other is derided by the other walkers as a “murderer.”
I counted about 280 f-words, and that count is almost certainly low. We hear at least another 50 s-words. Other used profanities include “a–,” “b–ch,” “b–tard,” “d–n” and “h—.” God’s name is misused at least eight times (half of those with “d–n”), and Jesus’ name is abused another four times.
We hear plenty of crude references to bits of anatomy. A contestant makes some obscene gestures at a policeman saluting at the side of the road.
None.
Many of the walkers cover hundreds of miles over the course of a few days. And they are not allowed to stop—ever. Even to go to the bathroom. And they’re not allowed to leave the road, either. As a result, the walkers urinate and defecate wherever and whenever they can.
One man walks backward to urinate, warning those behind him of what he’s going to do. Another squats in the middle of the road to do his business: He’s nearly shot before finishing, and his friends shout at him to get moving. When the guy pulls up his trousers and runs back up to his friends, they wave him away because he stinks so much.
Another walker suffers a grotesque and very visible bout of diarrhea (we see his exposed, spurting backside). He does not survive his illness.
Still another participant insists on chewing the same piece of gum throughout the entire contest, superstitiously insisting that he and the gum will finish the walk at the same time.
Book banning is a thing in this dystopian version of the U.S. And it’s not just books, but music as well. If the government catches someone distributing banned material, they’ll need to take either a loyalty oath on the spot or face instant execution. (We see someone make that difficult choice.)
Someone spits at a police officer.
The Long Walk is based on a 1979 book by Stephen King, written under his pseudonym Richard Bachman. This cinematic adaptation strays from the story’s own original path, but critics don’t seem to mind: Its “Freshness” rating on Rotten Tomatoes now stands at a fairly staggering 96%.
I get the praise. But I don’t share it.
No question, the movie is a fine bit of craftsmanship. And it asks some important questions. Certainly, the film’s underlying issues will resonate with many a secular critic. According to a recent statement, Director Francis Lawrence sees the film as a “metaphor for the erosion of the American dream.”
“Originally written in 1967 as an allegory for the Vietnam War, somehow King’s novel feels just as relevant and timely in 2025,” Lawrence writes. “I want audiences to leave the theater thinking not just about what they’ve seen, but about the world they’re part of.”
As I left the theater, though, I thought about the walkers themselves, more than the world they walk through. And with all due respect to Lawrence’s “American dream” metaphor, I saw another metaphor in here: one about life itself.
We likewise walk through this mortal coil year by year, day by day, step by step. We, too, know how this earthly walk will end. But still we push on.
As Christians, we believe that our own plodding trek will culminate in a glorious new day—one filled with laughter and song, where the pain of the walk is merely a memory. We will all be winners when our own journey is done.
But the walk still hurts. We suffer and stagger. Loved ones fall to the side and still we trudge on, feeling each burr and blister.
And yet, hopefully, we find joy in the walk, too—just like the characters in the film. We find friendship. We find meaning.
“We don’t think about making it to the end,” McVries says. “We think about moments.”
Those moments are precious onscreen, just as they are in life. Moments of kindness. Of laughter. Sometimes, moments that inspire our characters to be better, even in the midst of all the pain and sorrow and horror. McVries tells us how hard it is to find those moments of joy and meaning. He fights to find the light in the darkness.
But at the end of The Long Walk, the darkness overwhelms. And the light—at least in the movie–cannot overcome it.
The Long Walk betrays its characters and destroys whatever meaning might’ve been gleaned from the journey. Some will call the finale hard or brave or real. I call it nihilistic.
The film is filled with other issues, too: the shattered skulls, the spattered blood, profanity so pervasive that the filmmakers must’ve had to work hard to get all those f-words in. But the film’s stickiness—its ability to hang with you well after the credits roll—lies not in those easily tabulated problems, but in its underlying message.
The Long Walk is a long slog of a movie, and each step comes with serious problems. And just when you think your own cinematic journey is over—that the journey had some meaning to it—the movie pulls the trigger. And darkness falls.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
