NIHILISM, GUN VIOLENCE, AND THE LONG WALK

Let’s begin with moments. One step, then another. Grit and determination will get you through. We are, after all, a nation of bootstrap citizens. It’s as simple as that. 

Or is it?

Let’s start again. 

I want to talk about The Long Walk (2025). I want to talk about horror and the narrative language of isolation and violence. I want to talk about stories about revolutionary action and the specter of American gun violence. About catharsis and the visual narratives of brutality and how desolation on a road unending can still, sometimes, be a relief. But mostly I want to talk about The Long Walk. 

Directed and produced by Francis Lawrence, The Long Walk was released by Lionsgate on September 12, 2025. Adapted from Stephen King’s novel of the same title and set in an alternative 1970s, the movie follows a group of fifty “walkers,” young men under the age of eighteen selected by national lottery to join a televised contest in which they will walk across American roads at a pace of three miles per hour without stopping until only one remains. Any walker who falls below pace is given three warnings before receiving his euphemistic “ticket” by the silent soldiers who follow alongside the walkers in armored trucks. The winner receives untold riches and a single wish by the sinister Major (played by Mark Hamill) who orchestrates the Walk. The losers are unceremoniously shot with automatic weapons. 

The Major opens the Walk by emphasizing the bravery and the bootstraps narrative of the exercise, claiming the Walk as a means to revitalize the failing American economy in the aftermath of an unnamed war while simultaneously galvanizing the public spirit. Here, the walkers are provided with metal tags emblazoned with their numbers, provided with canteens and ammo belts filled with food, and then told to line up and walk like soldiers preparing for a ruck march. With young men chosen by lottery and even provided with dog tags before being sent out to die, the parallels to the Vietnam-era draft are as impossible to ignore in the film as they were in King’s original novel. 

However, while many elements of King’s book remain in the movie, several changes have been made in the transition from page to screen. For one, Ray Garraty (played by Cooper Hoffman) and Peter McVries (played by David Jonsson), the two main characters, have different motivations in the film. Ray’s father, a radical disappeared by the state apparatus in the novel, was executed in front of his wife and young son by the Major himself in the movie. Should he win, Ray plans to wish for one of the witnessing soldier’s carbine rifles to murder the Major and hopefully “nudge” the world toward change. Peter’s motivations have similarly shifted from a nihilistic desire to die after attempting to rape his ex-girlfriend in the novel to the hope that he can win enough money to make a difference for children who grew up in foster care as he did. He further muses about using his wish to allow the Walk two winners instead of just one. 

These changes are telling. Here, both Ray and Peter understand the power of the state apparatus that surrounds them. Their goals involve working within the framework of that apparatus, not subverting it—an interesting addition in the canon of dystopian death game films, especially given that Francis Lawrence directed four Hunger Games movies and is on deck to release a fifth in 2026. The spectacle of resistance is not an unfamiliar story for him. Yet, The Long Walk is less a story of rebellion against the brutality of an uncaring militaristic state—though the American depicted in Lawrence’s film is certainly that—but instead a journey through that America by the young men who grew up in it. Notably, all the walkers respond in ways to both the soldiers that follow and ultimately murder them and the larger apparatus of the imperialistic forces that host the Walk in ways that mirror real-life responses to American gun violence. 

Pete, who ultimately “wins” the Walk in Lawrence’s version—another departure from King’s novel—hopes to bootstrap his way to capitalistic success and change the world through charity. His musing about adding a second winner in the future will not save his friends walking next to him, a fact all of them must know but never comment on. Yet, he hopes that incremental change can make a difference, that by playing along with the rules and abiding by the system he can affect change within it. Ray, meanwhile, hopes to use the Long Walk to his own ends. His wish, should he win, falls within the established parameters; he is well within his rights to ask for a weapon and hopes righteous vengeance will, as he says, “nudge” positive change even at the cost of his own life. After all, isn’t a good guy with a gun the solution to our decidedly American woes?

Maybe not, The Long Walk says. Maybe not. 

Still, Ray isn’t the only one who attempts to respond to gun violence by force. Both Henry Olson (played by Ben Wang) and Collie Parker (played by Joshua Odjick) attack the soldiers separately at different points in the film; Collie even manages to steal a gun and kill one. However, subverting the expectation of bold, heroic action against a brutal state apparatus, neither of the boys succeed. Instead, both are unceremoniously shot and left for dead for their efforts. In his attempt, Collie further attempts to galvanize the surviving walkers into joining him after he kills one of the soldiers. None do and Collie is mortally wounded for his efforts—the soldiers, likely to discourage further rebellion, shoot both the boys in the stomach instead of the head. Instead of a quick execution, the spectacle of drawn-out suffering is chosen by the state. Still, even then there are choices—though limited ones. Unlike Henry, who is simply left on the road to die slowly, and in agonizing pain, Collie shoots himself with his stolen rifle and thus ends his revolutionary action alone. The survivors look away and keep walking. 

Had the walkers rebelled sooner, they might have succeeded; the fifty boys who start the journey far outnumbered the soldiers who ultimately murder them. If this occurs to any of them, the revelation comes far too late for them to act upon it, and the question remains unspoken. They must keep going. 

Other walkers attempt to mock or alternatively plead and reason with the soldiers; begging for mercy, for empathy, for anything at all. Not a single instance of a child begging a fully grown adult to help them works in The Long Walk; nor does mockery, attempting to run away, or even when the walkers band together to try and help their fellows either by words of encouragement or physically lifting a struggling body off the road. Every time a boy gets his third warning, the soldiers appear and unceremoniously shoot him in the head. No response can convince the apparatus of imperialist violence to view the walkers as human—not violence enacted against the state, not appeals to humanity, or empathy, not even a child bolting for shelter. All these attempts at either reasoning, rebellion, or acquiescence end the same way. The gun barks, and a child dies. All potential attempts at responding to gun violence that are attempted in the real world are attempted in the film, and all of them fail. 

Here, I’ll highlight a small moment that comes at the beginning: the image of a blind cat sitting on a mailbox as the walkers pass, its head tilted quizzically as they walk by. The unknowability of the cat mirrors the impassive faces of the soldiers who follow the walkers and are tasked with executing all but one of them. Whatever these men and women feel about killing forty-nine children in a televised death march is as unknown to the walkers as it is to the audience. The soldiers never speak, never show emotion of any kind. They cannot be moved, cannot be driven to empathize with the children they are ordered to kill, and show no reaction even to the death of one of their own. The machinery of fascism must be fed by gun violence and the brutalized bodies of children, and so the soldiers do their duty. What they feel about it is unknowable, and ultimately unimportant. Much like their charges, they simply step over the dead and keep going.  

Notable, too, is the insistence on isolation as the walkers move across their American roads. Unlike King’s novel, the film presents the spectators who gather to witness the Long Walk as largely silent and isolated. While occasionally groups appear, they rarely emote or speak and often stand alone. Whatever their reactions to the Long Walk or their reasons for coming out to witness it, the audience has no more way of knowing than the walkers themselves. Even the crowd at the end, when only Ray and Peter are still alive, is faceless and undefined. Nothing human can be recognized within its mass. The spectacle of the crowd remains muted and distant—even the fireworks that announce Pete’s victory are clearer than the faces in the crowd that surrounds him as he takes Ray’s wish for his own and executes the Major with one of the soldier’s rifles. The crowd remains faceless and unknowable even at this seeming moment of triumph. However, this is not the case for the spectacle of violence within the film itself. 

In the film as in King’s novel, the story lingers over the bodies of the characters. The physical toll of the walk is noted with brutal clarity. Children die because they get cramps, because they have seizures, because they have diarrhea and cannot walk any further. The camera stays not only with images of blood but also on shit and the torn jaw of a young boy shot through the mouth. The revolution might be televised, but unlike Lawrence’s earlier work with The Hunger Games series, it will not be made beautiful. Children die in pain, in indignity, and in great number. There are no beautiful martyrs here, only the stark reality of what a bullet does when it hits a child in the face. The camera does not look away. The audience is not allowed to, either. Here, much of the horror enters. 

Critic David Edelstein derisively first penned the term “torture porn” in his 2006 New York Times article “Torture Porn: The Sadistic Movie Trend” to describe the rising subgenre of violent, nihilistic horror films that came post-9/11. Edelstein’s dislike of horror has been extensively discussed elsewhere, but I’ll highlight a line toward the end of the article where he discusses his experience witnessing a disturbing film, demanding, “Where do you look while these defilements drag on?” 

This is a telling question, both in film and the larger world. It also assumes that looking away is a valid option. While the soldiers who ultimately execute forty-nine of the walkers remain largely unknowable to both the characters and the audience, the damage they inflict does not. No one is allowed to look away. The walkers are trapped by the circumstances, unable to escape the reality faster than they can put their feet to the pavement and establish physical distance. The audience, however, must consider real images of violence. As of this writing, there have been 450 mass shootings in the United States in 2025 alone. A study in The Lancet suggested that the death toll in Gaza could exceed more than 186,000 people given the amount of people missing and indirect deaths. Images of violent death and the tools of violent death blanket the world. Many responses have been offered to enact change. Thus far, few have worked. 

So, too, it goes in The Long Walk. No matter how hard the characters tried to either work within the system or dismantle it through revolutionary action, none of their efforts matter. All of them, in one way or another, succumbed to gun violence. Their bodies are brutalized and left to rot on an American road as the wheels of imperialism and gun violence keep turning and turning. Even Pete’s ultimate act of vengeance is unlikely to enact real change. What does it matter that a figurehead has been killed? The Major’s death is unlikely to change anything, and Pete’s own survival seems increasingly unlikely to last long past the final scene. 

Nonetheless, the film ends with Pete turning back to a silent, dark road, and continuing the walk. The audience knows that road can only end in his death, a revelation all the walkers ultimately come to within the story. None of their efforts to enact change, to save each other, or even to comfort the dying made a difference. This is not a story about revolutionary action—or if it is, it’s a story about a failed one. Everyone on the Walk who tried to make a difference or even to save a life there failed. They all died, likely for nothing, and they died brutally. What does it matter that these people were kind in the middle, except that it made them human?

I would argue that it means everything. That even in the midst of unending brutality, of a system meant to dehumanize and sacrifice its children on the altar of capitalism, it matters that a group of strangers made the deliberate choice to talk to each other. Pete and Ray form a small cadre of friends as the walk continues, promising to look out for each other, and hold to that promise even at cost to themselves. Even Gary Barkovitch (played by Charlie Plummer), whose character has a much larger role as an antagonist in the novel and is initially positioned as a threat to the other walkers after he causes the death of one, is ultimately forgiven and allowed back into the fold. Here, the emphasis is less on the crowd and spectacle—though there is certainly spectacle in the violence depicted on screen—and instead on smaller moments of kindness and humanity shared between the characters. They talked to each other. And in talking to each other, they were kind. Even in the midst of a nihilistic, all-encompassing horror, they were human. The Long Walk is less concerned with revolutionary action, failed or not, than this simple fact of humanity. Sometimes, you just don’t win. But it still matters that you tried to be kind to your fellow human being in the middle. And in that, I find some relief even within the nihilism of the road. 

Walk with me a little while longer, friend. We’re still here. 

૯

Works Cited

Edelstein, David. “Torture Porn: The Sadistic Movie Trend.” New York Magazine, 26 

Khatib, Rasha et al. “Counting the Dead in Gaze: Difficult but Essential.” The Lancet vol. 404, Issue 10449, 237−38. 

“Mass Shooting Tracker.” Mass Shooting Tracker, massshootingtracker.site/. 2025.