I just finished watching The Long Walk, and wow, bleak doesn’t even begin to cover it. I love a good “crush my spirit and leave me staring at the wall” film as much as the next emotionally unwell cinephile, but this one? This one is mean. I have so many curse words floating around my brain right now they’re bumping into each other like pinballs.

Some movies telegraph their emotional doom early. This one does it in the first ten minutes. The premise is brutally simple: in an alternate 20th-century America, after some unnamed war and economic collapse, a military regime decides to boost national morale by… forcing 50 teenage boys to walk hundreds of miles until only one survives. The winner gets a big check and one wish granted.

Why? Great question. I have no answers and neither does the film.

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