Critic Reviews

The Long Walk is not for the faint of heart, but it is one of the best Stephen King adaptations ever made, and one of the best dystopian sci-fi movies to hit the big screen in a really long time.

No one should mistake The Long Walk for fun. But there’s satisfaction in its endurance, in the way grim inevitability drives the narrative with allegorical force. By the credits, you’ll feel as though you’ve marched every mile alongside the boys exhausted, shaken, and strangely, perhaps, wanting more.

The Long Walk exceeds even optimistic expectations to easily become one of the best Stephen King adaptations.

The Long Walk is an emotionally obliterating all-time great Stephen King adaptation, and undoubtedly one of the best films of 2025.

Despite the gore and the tragedies witnessed on screen, I left the theater hopeful.

It’s one of the most powerful King features for some time.

Attempted but abandoned by filmmakers from George A. Romero to King regular Frank Darabont, six decades after completion and 40 years after publication, now it crosses the finish line as one of the best King adaptations.

Casts itself as a frightening saga about tyranny’s capacity to acclimate its subjects to slaughter and slavery, and to coerce them into performing (and celebrating) self-destruction under the guise of unity, strength, and progress.

This is gut-punch, feel-bad studio filmmaking, all the more notable for how rarely it happens.

It’s not that The Long Walk has made walking terrifying — although certainly it’s a fraught and frightening walk. It’s that it makes every trudge through every day remind us of torture.