The Long Walk ( Blu ray review )

Since the beginning of the 90´s i have watched basically all movie adaptations, and TV series adaptation based on novels, and stories by world famous horror autthor Stephen King. I remember that my very first film adaptation based on a Stephen King novel, and that is the 1989 horror film Pet Sematary. I watched this film on VHS back in 1990 when the film came out on Swedish rental VHS. I was too young to rent this film ( i was 12 years old at that time ), but my Grandmother Maj wanted to see this film and rented it. We watched it together in her apartment in the small town of Bengtsfors, and we both loved the film. The brilliant VHS cover of this film is iconic, and the original movie poster of Pet Sematary always looked creepy to me. What made this horror film work so well was the extremely heavy tragedy, how you deal with the loss of a child and how to process that grief. It doesn´t help that the main character Louis Creed ( played by actor Dale Midkiff who you can see in The Crow: Salvation as well ), try to resurrect his son Gage Creed ( Miko Hughes ) to bury him in the Pet Sematary, where their cat Church was brought back to life. Of course his son return to life, but is clearly not himself anymore. Pet Sematary is a true classic horror film based on the novel by the same name, and worth owning in your physical Stephen King movie collection. It was just about a year later i watched the Stephen King film adaptation Misery, which is one of my personal favourite films based on his book. Directed by legendary director Rob Reiner, the horror film Misery tell the story of author Paul Sheldon ( James Caan ) who ends up in a terrible car accident after driving from Silver Creek, Colorado. A woman named Annie Wilkes ( Kathy Bates ) luckily find him at the crash site, where she takes him home to her cabin. As Paul wakes up he is grateful that Annie helped him, feeding him, taking care of his wounds. But it turns out she is his biggest fan, and may have some serious mental illness issues. Misery is a very well made psychological horror film with fantastic acting, also worth owning on physical media. Speaking of physical media, last year the film The Long Walk based on a novel by Stephen King was released in cinemas. I did not see this film in cinema ( that was actually my plan to experience this film on the big screen ), instead i decided to review the physical blu ray copy of The Long Walk that i bought online. Is this a film for true Stephen King fans, or is this one of the worst Stephen King film adaptations in many years?

In a dystopian future we find 50 men who have approved to compete in a competition known as The Long Walk. The main mission is to able to walk to the finish line and you can not stop, if you do you will be executed. Also, there is only one survivor in this competition. For each day that goes by, there is no other way out than surviving at any cost, no matter what you have to do.

The best way to describe The Long Walk would be to say this is the walking edition of The Hunger Games, with some influences of the classic dystopian action film Battle Royale, directed by Kinji Fukasaku. If you combine this together with strong acting performances, good character development and a solid mix of horror influences, you have a film that´s definetely quite different from most movie releases. What i especially think makes this film stand out is the concept of this film, walk without stopping or you will be killed. It´s a very simple detail and it may sound boring on paper, an yet it is very effective with the atmosphere surrounding this dystopian society. One thing i think this film really manage to do, is to show how important it is to focus on your goal, when all hope may seem completely lost. Knowing that only one can survive this walk definetely makes this film feel depressing, but in a fascinating way. How do you deal with the knowledge that you may not survive? Do you finally give up or do you go all in, no matter if you end up dead? Do you support others or just focus on yourself, just to increase chances of surviving until the end? There are especially two characters that really shine in this film, and they are the characters known as Raymond ( played by actor Cooper Hoffman from the funny 2024 biographical comedy-drama film Saturday Night, worth a watch ), and Pete McVries ( played by actor David Jonsson, who i recognized from Alien: Romulus ). Their scenes together really make a powerful impact in this film, where they find a friendship and deal with all the death that surrounds them. We also have legendary actor Mark Hamill here as the macho pig character The Major, a wonderful performance indeed. The horror elements in The Long Walk may take some time to really shine through, but once they do they make an impact. A really good Stephen King film adaptation by director Francis Lawrence ( director of the Keanu Reeves classic Constantine, a personal favourite film that i highly recommend ). I wish the special features on the blu ray would have been more ( i bought the UK blu ray release ). We could have had 2 hours of special features at least, still worth picking up if you are a fan of Stephen King. The Long Walk proves you can still make really effective horror films, with the right cast and solid story telling.

Ratiing: DDDD