I went to go see this last week, solely because The Life of Chuck see my past review here was so good, and this was the second Stephen King book-to-movie adaptation release this year. I probably went in with expectations a little too high.

I’ll start with what worked, move to what didn’t, and then wrap with the ending and final thoughts. (Also assume spoilers starting now.)

TLDR The Longest Walk: Not worth the walk to see it in theaters. 😂

The main actors keep this movie alive. Without them, I might have bailed. Cooper Hoffman (Phillip Seymour Hoffman's son), aka that funny kid from Licorice Pizza one of the funniest coming-of-age films of the 2020s, and David Jonsson, aka the best part of Alien: Romulus as Andy the synthetic. These two characters carry the bulk of the movie, and you live The Long Walk mostly through their eyes. The script gives them thin backstories, yet both are talented enough to make the characters feel real.

The other really interesting parts are the camerawork; so much of the film is staged on a single road, yet the shots stay inventive and engaging. The angles, pacing, and blocking are thoughtful. This couldn't have been easy...consider the continuity challenge alone. A column of walkers that must maintain speed inside a fictional world, plus a military presence beside them, plus plus a full film crew squeezing onto the same stretch of street. It should feel repetitive, but it rarely does. Would like to see a behind-the-scenes look at this. There are some moments when I was just in awe at what I was looking at on the screen. There are moments here that feel like a playbook for staging street scenes.

Outside of what I just brought up and the core premise, the script is really weak and basically runs on fumes. Outside of the initial premise and the idea around The Longest Walk, it really just falls flat on everything else.

The other walkers barely register as people.

It has that glossy, very Netflixly feel where the trailer and logline are the meal, and the movie we have to sit through is the garnish. There is very little character meat beyond the two leads and any other interesting development that happens outside of this.

Throughout watching this movie, I realized just how much of what is wrong with movies these days is in this very movie. The violence is also quite unnerving after a certain point.

After a while, it feels engineered for shock more than story. Some bodily-function bits undercut the film’s sharper ideas and made me check out. I just don't have the stomach for actively looking at violence or any of this stuff in my old age.

I did feel like they had so many other missed opportunities that could have been focused on what was happening with the morality on the outside edges of the streets, which they teased but never quite went there, hints of how a society might watch, wager, and rationalize this event, but the movie rarely follows those threads.

The ending lands trying to be controversial but it doesn't work. It is on the nose and does not feel earned by the character we have been watching the entire time. The ending to the book is actually quite different, and from what I have read, it is something far more practical and relatable to people that have been through a traumatic experience.

Not the worst thing I have seen this year, but it sits closer to that side of the spectrum. If they had leaned harder into the world around the road, this could have been a good movie. As it stands, it is an intriguing premise carried by two rising actors and a very sharp camera crew, with a story that never fully earns the miles it makes you walk to the theaters to see it. Which is why they will likely turn it to a Netflix series "soon™."