The Long Walk (2025)

Francis Lawrence simply cannot stop making The Hunger Games. The Long Walk is simple and focused, and by that virtue alone it manages to bring some freshness to an oversubscribed genre. 

Most post-apocalyptic films spend a lot of its runtime on world building. The Long Walk does not bother and instead just demands your suspension of disbelief. Because the plot is so simple, it’s not hard to oblige. 

(slight spoilers below)

I appreciate the approach it takes to human relationships in zero-sum life-and-death situations. It’s not realistic, but it’s fresh and hopeful. If you take me out of this walk, would I believe that someone as well-adjusted as Pete would enlist to do the long walk in the first place? No. But within this walk, I could be made to believe that camaraderie between fellow men in a doomed system can outshine cynicism. I’d like to live in that world. 

It’s also somewhat relevant to recent discourse about whether political violence is ever justified. It doesn’t try to answer the question, but I hope reasonable people can conclude that it adds perspective.