The Long Walk Stuns as a Top-Tier Stephen King Adaptation — and 2025’s Saddest Film

Some movies sting. This one levels you. Francis Lawrence teaming with JT Mollner on a 2025 live-action take of Stephen King’s The Long Walk starts faithful, then pivots hard at the end in a way that turns a bleak survival tale into a full-on love story. It’s bolder than the book, somehow sadder than anything I watched this year, and easily up there with the best King adaptations.

The setup: walk or die

We’re in a near-future America run by a fascist military regime. The country’s a husk, and the dictator in charge, the Major (Mark Hamill), is openly trimming the population. The annual spectacle: the Long Walk. Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) is one of 50 teens selected to compete (the novel puts 100 on the road). The rules are viciously simple: if you slow down or stop, you get a warning. Keep slipping, you get a bullet. The last boy standing wins whatever he wants. No catch. No mercy.

On paper, that’s already nasty. On screen, it’s worse. The movie lets you hang out with these kids long enough to like them, then watches them fall, one by one, in ways that get harder to shake. A Letterboxd review I love says, bluntly: "It’s not a fun movie." Depends what you call fun. If you’re into sci-fi horror, the first half hums. Then reality closes in.

Book-accurate… until it isn’t

King’s novel is laser-focused on Ray’s headspace. The film keeps most of that but gives him an actual life outside the march: a grieving mom (Judy Greer), a mission, and a reason to hate the Major. Ray quietly tells fellow walker Peter McVries (David Jonsson) that the Major executed his father in front of him for standing up to the regime. Ray’s not just trying to win; he’s planning to end the man running the country.

It’s also not just Ray’s story anymore. The movie spreads its heart around, building a scrappy friend group on the road: Olson (Ben Wang), Baker (Tut Nyot), Parker (Joshua Odjick). They crack jokes, share food, and try to keep each other awake while people around them drop. It’s warm, then brutal, by design.

The love story the book never gave you

The Ray/McVries bond is the center of the film. Hoffman and Jonsson have that effortless, spark-in-every-glance chemistry that sells the entire pivot. McVries keeps Ray steady when the rifles raise, talks him through the fog when his brain starts to float, and in the movie’s nastiest crowd scene, physically hauls him back onto the road after Ray bolts toward his mother in the stands. The Academy even singled that moment out online, reading Judy Greer’s shattered "Keep walking!" as a messy, terrified "I love you."

"What was the center of this? It’s the love story between Garraty and McVries… People had different ideas about what the relationship was, because the key to that relationship is that these characters love each other. They only know each other for a few days, but they really, truly love each other. And that’s what the center of the movie is – the love story."

Mollner said that months ago, and the film absolutely delivers on it. By the time the third act drops, the performances are so raw I genuinely forgot to breathe.

The ending (yes, they changed it)

If you’ve read the novel, you think you know where this goes. The film lets you think Ray is locked to win, then pulls the rug. McVries sits down, ready to give Ray the victory. Ray talks him out of it, pushes him to keep moving, and then chooses to take the shot himself. Ray dies so McVries can finish what they started.

McVries, shattered but steady, does exactly that. He confronts the Major and says, "This is for Ray Garraty," before pulling the trigger. He doesn’t pause to weigh national consequences or the moral math. He turns and walks into the night. He just keeps walking.

So is it 'fun'?

No. And also, sometimes, yes. It’s tense, propulsive, weirdly charming while the boys are still joking around, and then it grinds you down. The movie is mostly true to King until the finale, where it swaps the book’s cold, solitary victory for something intimate and devastating. The result is better cinema, and yeah, the saddest thing I saw in 2025.

Cast and the hurt

Cooper Hoffman is luminous and stubborn as Ray. David Jonsson matches him beat for beat as McVries, the lifeline who becomes the point of it all. Mark Hamill plays the Major with a smiling menace that curdles your stomach. Judy Greer weaponizes a single scream. Ben Wang, Tut Nyot, and Joshua Odjick round out the walkers who make the march feel like a living, dying community. It’s an ensemble of lovable screwups, and the movie knows exactly how to make you care before it cuts you down.

Other 2025 gut-punches

• Joel’s death, The Last of Us season 2: If you didn’t play the game, that golf club beatdown came out of nowhere.
• Richie’s death, It: Welcome to Derry: Co-showrunner Jason Fuchs says it had to happen for the long game. I’m still not over it.
• Helen’s death, The Uninvited: You can see it coming and it still knocks the wind out of you.
• The entire ending of Sinners: "Before the sun went down, I think that was the best day of my life" is going to haunt me for a while.

The Long Walk is available to rent or buy digitally. If you’re chasing more King on screen, there’s a fresh wave of adaptations lining up for 2026 and beyond.