Stop me if you’ve heard this before: somewhere in the distant future, a totalitarian police state is formed in the wake of a country’s economic collapse and widespread civil unrest. The most popular television show is now state-sponsored, a cutthroat competition designed to keep an agitated population distracted and squash a potential uprising. Cornered and hunted, the contestants’ desperation to survive is distorted into the compulsion to kill. Elimination is by death only. Win, however, and you might not make it out with your humanity intact anyway.
Perhaps you thought of the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger action film The Running Man, about incarcerated criminals who must survive against professional hitmen in a game show if they are to win back their freedom. (Edgar Wright’s take on the 1982 Stephen King novel it’s based on will release this year). Maybe what sprung to mind instead is the formative millennial young-adult book — and Francis Lawrence-directed 2012 adaptation — The Hunger Games, in which children aged between 12 and 18 are forced to fight to the death in their dystopia’s cruel annual tournament. No? In the intersection of that Venn diagram, another King adaptation and Lawrence film, is this year’s horror movie The Long Walk. Its televised contest follows a 100 teenage boys who must walk without stopping until only one remains — those who fall behind thrice are shot dead.
