Critics reviews

The existential paradox — are we all in this thing called life together, or is it every man for himself? — gives the film and its protagonists something meaty to chew on as it, and they, progress. But “The Long Walk” doesn’t dig into it in any deeply satisfying way.

[The Long Walk is] one of the best King adaptations... [The book's] simplicity is brought to the screen with surprising delicacy by Francis Lawrence... The protagonists may not contain multitudes. Yet in becoming part of a multitude they, like the film, become great.

Lawrence’s imagery has a stark, morose beauty. Additionally, his version strays from King’s path by both giving Raymond a concrete motivation for volunteering for this ordeal, and by concluding on a somewhat more conventional, and superficially satisfying, note.

Sometimes, the double-edged sword of the script’s focus on Garraty and McVries means that late-game sacrifices don’t hold much weight... But the spectacle of inevitable violence remains haunting regardless, especially as we watch these kids, resigned to their fate, try to go out with as much of their humanity intact as possible.

“The Long Walk” is a near-sighted film. It’s so focused on the American experience that it falls into the trap of treating the United States as significant only to itself and its own people. But despite that myopia, as a film about the way it feels to be an American... the film has undeniable strength.

By the end [of The Long Walk], viewers might feel more exhausted than the participants... That's because [the film]... is scantily characterized and barely cinematic... a wearying trek of tortured masculinity... For a movie about motion, “The Long Walk” feels oddly static, its washed-out images... leaving the impression of a featureless nowhereland.

“The Long Walk” doesn’t tell you or ask you anything new if you’re feeling pent up with rage by American leadership these days, but the film’s grim commitment to the bit is a rarity for a studio movie: This long walk doesn’t hold your hand along the way, nor does it tuck you in and read you a bedtime story at the end.

There’s something exhilarating about a filmmaker fully embracing a limited space, as Lawrence does here. Though set outdoors... the film offers the same suffocating claustrophobia and intensity of closed-space classics like Bug or Locke or The Hateful Eight... This is gut-punch, feel-bad studio filmmaking, all the more notable for how rarely it happens.

There’s integrity to the no-frills human horror of The Long Walk and Lawrence... follows through on its uncompromising bleakness... Yet the miseries are in keeping with a story where enlightenment is possible but escape is not.

[The Long Walk] comes across like a cross between a buddy movie and a horror movie – a war movie without the war. Ultimately, it all comes down to the core relationships, so it’s just as well that Hoffman and Jonsson are both terrific; their stars are certain to rise further off the back of this. But it is left to the viewer to fill in the gaps, suppress their niggling questions and just go along with it.

The film’s cynicism can be forgiven to an extent as it’s baked into its entire concept, but there’s a distinct lack of mystery to how things play out, and it becomes fairly obvious to see who’s going to drop and how just from a few simple traits.

JT Mollner’s screenplay takes some liberties with the book... but the film retains the novelist’s penchant for sketching a wide array of characters with a few defining traits... [and] the competing cast bust every tendon in creating gripping ambulatory drama... [The Long Walk is] the best King adaptations in many years.