The Long Walk

Daniel Cano

Recently, a lot of extremely good movies have been coming out in theaters. With blockbusters such as Jurassic World Rebirth, F1, Demon Slayer, and Weapons, 2025 has undeniably been a great year for cinefiles. Among all of these movies, there are some that don't really get the praises sung to them. One of these is a movie called The Long Walk, originally based on a book by Stephen King. The movie adaptation is one of those projects that are extremely good but go under the radar, mainly due to the other movies that came out around the same time. Unfortunately for The Long Walk, it was released around the same time as Hamilton’s re-release, the Demon Slayer movie, and The Conjuring 4. This, however, does not take any credit away from it, as popularity does not necessarily mean quality. Having said this, I believe that this movie was a truly beautiful cinematic experience. The plot is the following: it follows a dystopian USA; after “The Great War,” all past knowledge has been banned from society, so reading philosophers like Nietzsche or Kant is now illegal. The USA has fallen from the top after the war, and their economy is declining. In order to help with these issues, the government has decided to do a yearly raffle, in which they get teenagers to participate in an event known as “The Long Walk.” This event consists of a marathon, where the participants have to walk nonstop until there is only one remaining. If your walking speed goes below 3 MPH, you get a warning; if you try to escape or reach 3 warnings, you are shot dead.

What makes this movie so great is its simple complexity. While being a relatively short movie, and with most characters not getting much screen time due to their deaths, you would expect the movie to not be able to give much character depth or growth. However, it surprisingly manages to squeeze in a lot of character development, or moral depth, for almost all of the characters. It makes you fall in love with the characters despite your knowledge that eventually only one will remain alive, and that's the magic of it. It manages to play with your emotions and makes you feel irrational, like you shouldn't get attached to a character who is obviously going to die. This exact feeling is one that has been lost in many modern-day movies, which only strive to be quick cash grabs without much depth or complexity in their writing. Overall, I would rate this movie 4.5 stars and definitely recommend it to anyone who wishes to get invested and moved by cinema.