The Long Walk: America’s Next Top Trauma

Stephen King’s The Long Walk asks one simple question: what if middle school gym class ended in state-sanctioned execution?

In a future where the government solves boredom by making teenage boys walk until they literally drop dead, 100 kids are forced into a cross-country death march with exactly zero snack breaks. Walk too slow, get three warnings, and—boom—you’re deleted like last season’s streaming content.

Cooper Hoffman plays Ray Garraty, a sad-eyed boy with just enough backstory to make his inevitable demise feel poetic. He’s joined by Peter McVries (hot, haunted), Stebbins (probably a clone), and Barkovitch (definitely not okay). Meanwhile, Mark Hamill shows up as The Major, a military daddy figure who hands out trauma like participation trophies.

It’s bleak. It’s brutal. It’s allegedly a metaphor. And according to early buzz, the movie changes the book’s ending—which has already triggered at least five Reddit meltdowns and one guy threatening to walk in protest.

4.5 out of 5 government-issued step counters.

Come for the existential dread. Stay because you physically can’t stop.