THRILLS AND CHILLS (DOUBLE FEATURE): “The Long Walk” (2025) / “Him” (2025)

(Courtesy IMDb) 

The Long Walk (2025) 

Author Stephen King has been having a banner year in cinema this year, as four of his works have been adapted into theatrical features. These include Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey and Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck, while Edgar Wright’s remake of The Running Man releases next month. For this stretch, Hunger Games helmer Francis Lawrence directs JT Mollier’s screenplay based on King’s story, The Long Walk (one of the few projects written under the author’s pseudonym Richard Bachman). 

The story follows a select group of young men (some of them teenagers) in a post-apocalyptic America, who are entered into a nationwide contest where they walk across country until only one is left standing and alive. A strong young cast (including Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Charlie Plummer, and Ben Wang, and screen veterans Judy Greer and a cold and sinister Mark Hamill), on one hand, makes this a very investing and engrossing character-driven/ensemble piece, moving things at a steady and even pace, with shocking moments peppered throughout. 

The Long Walk is the latest example of Hollywood taking a simple premise and making it thoroughly gripping, nerve-wracking, and brutal. (Remember Rob Reiner’s film version of King’s Misery?) That being said, the relationships between these characters (some lonely; many, deeply troubled) are unpredictable and surprising, in ways that are both harsh and moving, whether displaying genuine camaraderie or emotional intensity. The film could almost work as a challenging double feature with Alex Garland & Ray Mendoza’s modern combat picture Warfare (from earlier this year). 

Walk packs so much thematic weight in its narrative, with discussions ranging from economic struggles to social and political issues, as well as discussions of death—and its certainty for everybody—and life, honoring those who have fallen, and how to spend one’s last moments. Other conversations revolve around who these characters are, what they want to be, hope for a better future, and what it means to be alive. Such moments are aided by Jeremiah Fraites’ incredible score and Jo Willem’s captivating cinematography (taking full advantage of natural, outdoor environments and desolate landscapes—or, at least, what’s left of them in this story). 

But while its filmmaking and execution (no pun intended) may be brilliant, its tone and outcomes are anything but. Make no mistake, The Long Walk is a bleak, violent, tragic, and heartbreaking tale. Characters spew out foul and crass four-letter words and sexual references like they’re in a Martin Scorsese or David Mamet piece. Plus, because of the restrictions of the eponymous walk, gross and cringy scenes find these young men defecating or urinating on the road. Some even kill themselves as a sole way out of this. The narrative may touch on the difference between holding onto bitterness and vengeance, and making amends (represented in the glimpse of a rainbow on the horizon, or in McVries’ statement about choosing to “find light in all this darkness”). But it’s a slow burn that takes a physical and psychological toll, and (like Sinners and Weapons) lacks redemption or salvation, with many turns that are gut-punching. Doesn’t sound so simple now, does it. 

*** 

(Courtesy Showbiz Junkies) 

Him (2025) 

I don’t recall Hollywood ever making a psychological horror in the guise of a sports movie prior to this year. (Or is it a sports movie in the guise of a psychological horror?) Either way, this sophomoric effort from Justin Tipping (with support from producer Jordan Peele and Monkeypaw) has officially created a genre-bending entry that shows a graphic, bloody, and cultish side to the sport of football. 

Originally titled GOAT (which is now the name of an upcoming release from Sony Animation), Him centers on rising star athlete and prodigy Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers), who is given an exclusive opportunity to train with his idol, Isaiah White, at the latter’s private compound in the middle of nowhere. What follows—if the trailers are any indication—is a surreal nightmare that makes Whiplash look like a jog around the stadium by comparison. 

Withers and Marlon Wayans (in a radical and sadistic turn as the aging quarterback White) are both thoroughly engrossing. Both actors carry each chapter/phase of this slow descent into madness—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual—even as the film loses its way and fumbles halfway through. (To be fair, Him is unfocused at times, with sequences that feel more like montages.) One of the most brutal scenes involves a player repeatedly being beaten in the face with a football via a passing machine, as a way to “motivate” the up-and-coming Cam into a more physically-demanding and intense role. (The visual use of X-rays at certain moments gives a unique insight into physical trauma via body and head slams.) Later, a more mellow Isaiah tells the young quarterback, “Find your own way to greatness. Don’t be me, be better.” Quite a dichotomy, if ever there was one. 

The imagery throughout Him is iconoclastic, mythological, and even occultish. Some of the spiritual iconography in the trailers and marketing, particularly Withers posing like the Christ statue in Rio de Janeiro (arms out, and gripping footballs), had me wondering (and worried) if Tripping and company were presenting an anti-Christian message here. The story is ambiguous, despite talk of “God, family, and football” (and vice versa), as well as the presence of obsessive fans and cult members, who refuse to have anybody else replace their “savior.” (It should be noted that the team Isaiah White played for is the San Antonio Saviors.) 

The film’s main slogan reads, “Greatness demands sacrifice.” It’s easy to see the biblical theme of gaining the world and losing your soul, with Isaiah frequently asking/reminding Cam, “What are you willing to sacrifice?” There’s visual motifs of stitches in Cam’s head may represent concussions and brain trauma, while moments of temptation blur what is real and surreal. And then there are the frequent blood transfusions and Satanic-like rituals (with one sequence that is a relentless bloodbath), which take things to a darker level, leading to some gladiatorial brawls that draw on survival-of-the-fittest mentalities. All this makes me wonder if Cam was planning his future, or if he was just (inadvertently) letting others do it for him. Either way, Him is a brutal cautionary tale that is uneven, unhinged, twisted, and forgets itself, no matter how intriguing and genre-bending its concept may be.