Stephen King’s ‘The Long Walk’ Is Here to Kick Off Feel-Bad Fall

The last time a Stephen King adaptation was in theaters, it was trying its damndest to lift you up. The Life of Chuck may not have been one of King’s blockbusters, an adaptation of one of his signature works, or even a movie that avoids apocalyptic overtones (the entire first act is predicated on an apocalypse, albeit not quite in the way it first appears). But it undoubtedly wanted audiences to come away feeling good—hence a summertime release that hoped to build some word-of-mouth at a time when viewers tend to flock to multiplexes in search of a good time. That time is now over. The next Stephen King movie hitting theaters is The Long Walk, wherein a group of young men compete in a voluntary-in-name-only contest where they must walk until they drop. Anyone who dips under a three-miles-per-hour pace is issued three warnings. After that, they’re shot dead by soldier escorts. The walking will continue until morale improves—for the last remaining walker, who is crowned champion and given untold rewards. For everyone else, the morale dips until an unceremonious death. Welcome to Feel-Bad Fall!

As the weather turns cooler and the news turns more dire – oh, do you want some annual protection for rising COVID cases? Well, depending on where you live, you might be out of luck! – the movies, too, are turning to grimmer matters. Yes, there will doubtless be some kind of feel-good hits this fall. Zootopia 2, maybe, although who knows what kind of adorable police brutality those cop animals have in store; Avatar 3, perhaps, although recall that the previous movie featured the death of a beloved family member and the lead characters wailing in rage and grief. And no, the state of the world wasn’t so hot over the summer, either – oh, except for global warming, which has made a lot of places hotter than ever. On the other hand: beach trips, popsicles, and Superman.

In their place now: The Long Walk, which evoked the Vietnam War upon its publication in 1979 and somehow manages to seem more reflective of our present-day conditions in 2025. In an authoritarian state that rose up from some kind of great division, The Major (Mark Hamill) presides over the annual walk with a can-do encouragement that borders on cruel mockery, talking up the strength and fortitude it will take to win, and how great it is that these young men have volunteered to test their mettle. As Cooper Hoffman’s main guy points out, no one’s ever really heard of an eligible man who doesn’t throw his hat in the ring for the “lottery” that selects these lucky contestants; whether out of fear of the government or economic desperation, everyone takes a shot. It’s basically a less sensationalized but also less honest Hunger Games, which King’s novel must have influenced. The men – boys, really – walk through a dystopian future that looks, well, a lot like any number of small-town outskirts in the United States. Shuttered storefronts, endless concrete, some beautiful scenery undermined by suburban decay.

It’s not a spoiler to say that in many ways, the walk in the movie goes as planned. That is, don’t expect to see scrappy young people immediately conspiring to secretly topple the authoritarian government that put them in this position, as in the Hunger Games sequels that director Francis Lawrence also made. Those movies were bleak, but they were about Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss fighting back, ultimately raging against the machine, even if there were great costs. The Long Walk doesn’t dress up the survival in Hunger Games-style adventuring, much less post-adventuring revolution; it’s clearly aiming for something closer to the day-to-day experiences more of us have, where we’re ground down at a steady, less glamorous pace. An old-fashioned rat race starts to look cuddlier by comparison.  

We’re in for a long walk through more grimness as the season presses on. In sequels to The Strangers and The Black Phone, people who seemed safe from evil serial killers are plunged back into peril. Biopics like The Smashing Machine and Christy will feature big, charismatic stars like Dwayne Johnson and Sydney Sweeney doing the Oscar-season suffering (and in these cases, specifically getting pummeled in professional fights). One of the hottest awards contenders coming out of festival season? Hamnet, a fictionalized story of William and Agnes Shakespeare grieving the death of their young son. Over in the blockbuster world, the season’s most anticipated sequel is Wicked: For Good, which is based on the largely downbeat second act of the Broadway smash. You know, the half without “Defying Gravity.”

There’s nothing wrong with a bunch of downers to match the pessimism so many people are feeling out there in the broader world. The Long Walk may have been written and shot during Biden’s term (and, for that matter, first conceived during the Lyndon Johnson years!), but it has the unmistakable feeling of uncertainty over whether the better future hoped-for in a post-COVID world would actually materialize. Dystopian stories have been alluring for decades, but they started to feel distressingly plausible right around 2016 or so – and that was before a global pandemic killed millions of people. The trick is to construct a dystopia with something to say, whether ultimately hopeful or committed to the feel-bad bleakness. The Long Walk has a more concrete ending than the ambiguous one King cooked up for his novel, but its net-downer experience doesn’t feel especially insightful, which in a weird way contributes to its feel-bad bona fides. Not only is it a bummer, it’s kind of a shallow one. Just as Life of Chuck turned an apocalypse inward, The Long Walk turns an authoritarian nightmare into a nascent friend group you don’t want to see disrupted. Their humanity should provide some kind of solace, even in the darkness. Instead, you just get the feeling that it’s a long road through feel-bad fall ahead.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.