There are so many series about dystopian death games that it almost seems like each new movie or show about a game where you win or you die feels the need to be even more elaborate than whatever came before it in order to stand out. Explosive bomb collars, complex arenas, breathless media coverage of the bloodshed, and twisted versions of Korean children's games are just some of the ways that series about deadly contests have upped the stakes to distinguish themselves from the competition. The crowded subgenre feels like a battle royale itself, and yet the best recent entry is a movie that does exactly the opposite of this trend increasing complexity. The Long Walk, a Stephen King adaptation released last year that hits HBO Max today, is about as mundane and straightforward fatal contests you could imagine — which is exactly why it's so effective.
It makes a certain amount of sense that The Long Walk would be a simpler death game than Battle Royale, The Hunger Games, Squid Game, Escape Room, The Running Man, or any number of similarly deadly contests, because The Long Walk came before all of them. Writing under his pen name Richard Bachman, King published The Long Walk way back in 1979. (The Running Man, another Bachman novel that also got a film adaptation last year, was published in 1982.) While it's perhaps a stretch to say The Long Walk invented this subgenre, considering that gladiators were fighting in ancient Rome before the birth of Christ and other works like 1924's The Most Dangerous Game and the 1971 movie Punishment Park have similar themes, The Long Walk casts a long shadow. In a run-down, dystopian future America, young men participate in a contest in which there will only be one winner and every loser dies. It's a pitch that predates the YA lit craze that would make the Hunger Games such a sensation.
