The Long Walk and Other Tales

Reading your first Stephen King book has always seemed like a rite of passage as one transitions from reading young adult and children’s books to novels for grown-ups. The first book aimed at adults I can ever remember cracking open was King’s 1983 “Pet Semetary,” which not only scared the sweet, innocent hell out of me as a 10-year-old, but made me a King fan for life.

Yet, so many of his books seem impossible to adapt for movies and television successfully. The issue is that some of his horrific ideas are only frightening in our collective imaginations than they are onscreen. Sure, some of his monsters have been woven into some truly iconic films, but it’s his less horror-driven stories that seem to retain a lasting power. I just want another of his films to get under my skin as deeply as “The Shining” did when I was 12.

Still, there have been four King adaptations this year, with a remake of “The Running Man” still to come in November, so even though the bad adaptations far outweigh the good ones, they’re going to get made regardless. King has been a cottage industry for decades and will remain one long after he passes.

In celebration of the release of “The Long Walk,” King’s newest novella to receive an adaptation, let’s take a look at some of the best and worst Stephen King movies and shows to grace our big and small screens.

“The Long Walk” is another one of those adaptations that almost gets there, but trips over its own feet at the finish line. The concept is one of King’s best (technically, it’s a Richard Bachman joint, but it’s all semantics). In a dystopian America, everyone is broke, hungry, and desperate. So, the government creates a contest where 50 young men, one from each state, walk across the country until only one is left standing and the winner receives riches beyond their wildest dreams. The twist is that you get three warnings if you slip below three miles an hour and then if you aren’t going quickly again, a soldier puts a bullet in your head.

While “The Long Walk” is better than many of the King adaptations I’ve seen, it ultimately still doesn’t work because director Francis Lawrence instills it with the same lightweight realism as he does his “Hunger Games” films. Without a gritty immediacy to the proceedings, “The Long Walk” never sells its high concept as reality, so we’re left just watching a solid group of young actors performing King’s folksy dialogue while walking along a rural road. The film is still entertaining, but with no intensity and an ending that completely fumbles the original by rewriting character motivations on the fly, it won’t ever top the list of the truly great King adaptations.

“The Shawshank Redemption” (1994) and “Stand By Me” (1986) have long been sterling examples of how you adapt a King short story while still making changes that fit a cinematic telling of the tale over a literary one. You can sometimes change his plots to make them more cinematic, but it’s capturing the soul of King’s characters and world that really makes the adaptations work. Sure, “Shawshank” is about a horrific prison and, ultimately, an escape, but what makes it eternal is Andy and Red and the hope that their friendship grew into a better life. What makes “Stand By Me” (based on the short story “The Body”) such a lasting film isn’t the darkness of the tale of four kids searching rural America for a dead body, but that it’s four relatable characters going on an adventure that reminds us of our own distant childhoods. We’re emotionally invested in their lives, not the horror between the margins.

That’s where King sometimes gets misunderstood: he’s not some crown prince of evil like pear-clutching parent advisory councils would have you believe. Yeah, there are monsters, serial killers and demons galore in his stories, but there is always, always, a light in opposition to the darkness. King believes in the goodness of humanity at its core, so most of the horrible violence and horror he has invented is just in service of showing how easily defeated evil is by basic human decency.

Some adaptations that forget about King’s ultimately overpowering optimism can be pretty fun, though. I have a soft spot for the 2007 film adaptation of King’s short story, “The Mist,” which follows a group of people trapped in a grocery store as a thick mist full of monsters surrounds them. No spoilers, but filmmaker Frank Darabont (also responsible for “Shawshank” and “The Green Mile”) changes the ending of the story into something almost impossibly bleak. It’s such a hardcore ending that, when I saw it in the theater, everyone sat through the entire credits in silence before they could bring themselves to leave.

The worst adaptations of his work are the ones that forsake the characters or themes just to focus on one or two of King’s myriad ideas. I’m a die-hard fan of King’s magnum opus, “The Dark Tower,” so the 2017 adaptation starring Idris Elba broke my heart a little. The film truly doesn’t understand the source material, and even though the casting of Elba is perfection, the dreadful script leaves him with nothing to do but glower.

Mike Flanagan, the lowercase king of uppercase King adaptations (his take on “Doctor Sleep” is the sequel to “The Shining” we all deserved), is the current rights holder for “The Dark Tower,” and I can only imagine how truly magnificent and epic his version will be. His adaptation of the lovely King story, “The Life of Chuck,” from earlier this year was sadly under-seen by general audiences and didn’t really get the love it deserved. “Chuck” is another deeply humanist King story about the universes we all carry inside of us and the profound importance of a single human life. Flanagan + King = magic.

While “The Long Walk” certainly isn’t one of the best King adaptations, it’s still worth checking out for completists and for those thirsty for the next “Hunger Games” movie. Even if it won’t have the staying power of some of the great King movies, compared to the abysmal “The Stand” series from a few years back or the hilariously un-scary “Salem’s Lot” remake from last year, it might be a masterpiece.

Yes, King sells millions of books, is a household name and some of his books are absolute trash (“I’m looking at you, “The Tommyknockers”), but I wonder if he still doesn’t really get the respect he deserves. He writes just as much about the difficulties of being a decent human being as anything else; it’s just the evil clowns, ancient vampires and psychotic hotels we tend to remember.

What’s your favorite Stephen King adaptation?

Trailer for The Long Walk

The Long Walk

Dir. Francis Lawrence

Grade: C+

Now playing at Regal Old Mill, Madras Cinema 5

This article appears in the Source September 25, 2025.