The Long Walk (2025)
Directed by Francis Lawrence
In a dystopian 1970s America, fifty teenage boys take part in a deadly annual walking contest, forced to maintain a minimum pace or be executed, until only one survivor remains.
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38 films that influenced The Long Walk
What critics say influenced The Long Walk
…and “The Hunger Games” franchise, which shares the same director, Francis Lawrence, as “The Long Walk.”
The scenario is like a more dystopian, less stage-managed version of “The Hunger Games,” except Lawrence (who’s directed all but the first movie in that franchise) is holding back very little of the story’s viciousness.
With a clear thematic kinship to The Hunger Games, Lawrence proves an astute choice…
The Long Walk has been unfavourably compared to Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games saga…
It would be easy to see this as a precursor to the Hunger Games franchise, with which Lawrence has been cinematically involved since nearly its beginning.
It’s a statement that Francis Lawrence previously made with his Hunger Games movies…
It belongs on the shelf next to The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist, and Stand by Me as a rare example of a filmmaker getting a King adaptation completely right.
…the resilience, persistence and human spirit of Shawshank…
…the thirst for survival recalls The Shawshank Redemption…
…there are shades of Shawshank Redemption’s central pairing within this tale’s protagonists…
“The Long Walk” is too lockstep to match “The Shawshank Redemption” as the best film adaptation of a King non-horrorshow, but it’s a tale excitingly and movingly told.
…they talk, like Andy Dufresne and Red Redding in The Shawshank Redemption (1994), with hard truths and intimate secrets spilling without shame over the miles…
In today’s age of “Squid Game,” “The Hunger Games,” and the impending “Running Man” remake, “The Long Walk” feels like their stripped-down, somber cousin: less spectacle, more soul.
They’re calling this the American “Squid Game,” but Stephen King got there first.
…and “Squid Game.”
A paterfamilias to The Hunger Games, Squid Game, Battle Royale, and a slew of other imitators and descendants…
They’re driven in a similar fashion to the characters in Squid Game, and this movie feels like a stripped-down take on that premise.
…from Lawrence’s many Hunger Games installments to Netflix’s Squid Game…
“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” for Gen Z — texts that traffic in the extreme outcomes of American capitalism…
The high concept suggests the gruelling dance marathons of the Depression that provided the inspiration for Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
…closest in misanthropic spirit to Sydney Pollack’s shocking 1969 “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,” with cinematographer Jo Willems applying a similar dustbowl aesthetic…
It’s like They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? on steroids.
If Stand By Me suggests lost innocence, then a truer cinematic companion is Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969). Both films fixate on endurance and the spectacle of despair.
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Since then, there have been scores of movies devoted to similar barbaric schemes like “Battle Royale” (2000)…
A paterfamilias to The Hunger Games, Squid Game, Battle Royale, and a slew of other imitators and descendants…
…acerbic genre films such as Battle Royale…
Kids have been offered up for sport in dystopian stories from "Battle Royale" to "The Hunger Games,"…
…or the life-changing journey in Stand By Me (adapted from King’s novella The Body)…
Like in “Stand By Me,” camaraderie emerges, further proof that King’s stories often shine brightest when built on the fragile bonds between boys under pressure.
There are moments where Ray and his comrades are walking in a line together, shooting the shit, that feel like a scene out of Stand By Me, only the bodies that they eventually see are their own.
…the gold standard of coming-of-age stories about white boyhood in "Stand By Me"…
…in the vein of Stand By Me…
The Long Walk stands out as a dystopian riff on Stand By Me, where a totalitarian nightmare replaces sentiment and nostalgia.
The Long Walk is a tense, surprisingly emotional film that play out like a mix of Stand By Me by way of Lord of the Flies and The Hunger Games.
But since these are young boys, there’s a Lord of the Flies element that creeps into the proceedings.
I’d describe it as Lord of the Flies on foot, but it’s really more like The Hunger Games for dudes (complimentary)…
Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck was released earlier this year, with its big message being that life doesn’t necessarily have to amount to a major, earth-shattering goal, but it’s about trying to find as many small moments of joy as you possibly can…
That The Long Walk arrives in the same year as another seemingly unadaptable King, The Life of Chuck, somehow makes all the sense in the world, because both find a tempered, realistic hope in the shadow of inevitable death.
…themes reminiscent of The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist, and The Life of Chuck.
Unlike the previous Stephen King adaptations of 2025, The Monkey and The Life of Chuck, this one is based on a novel.
Hamill did solid work in another King adaptation this year, The Life of Chuck…
This is Hamill’s second appearance in a King adaptation this year after The Life of Chuck, and he brings such an interesting flavor to this villain.
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It belongs on the shelf next to The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist, and Stand by Me as a rare example of a filmmaker getting a King adaptation completely right.
…themes reminiscent of The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist, and The Life of Chuck.
Mollner's script takes a page out of Frank Darabont's guidebook when adapting "The Mist," improving upon King's fantastic source material…
The Mist (2007; Paramount+, YouTube Primetime, rentable): Frank Darabont, who owned the rights to The Long Road for years, gave his adaptation of another King story one of the grimmest endings in movie history.
Eighteen years after the theatrical release of The Mist, another Stephen King movie has been crafted to further that tradition…
Akin to Osgood “Oz” Perkins’ The Monkey, Lawrence and Mollner’s film follows many of the same narrative beats and character points as its source material…
Unlike the previous Stephen King adaptations of 2025, The Monkey and The Life of Chuck, this one is based on a novel.