The Kids Aren’t All Right
Two adaptations of King novels — one from six years ago, the other first published forty-six years ago — landed recently. They have one thing in common: kids in jeopardy being subjected to cruel treatment (The Institute) and execution (The Long Walk). Here are my thoughts.
I wouldn’t recommend The Long Walk as a first-date movie. It’s hard to “enjoy” a film where you know going into it that pretty much everyone you’re introduced to at the beginning will be slaughtered by the end. With most horror movies, there’s always a chance that multiple characters could survive. Not so here. By definition, 49/50 of the kids “lucky enough” to be chosen by lottery to take a crack at untold wealth and a wish are guaranteed to die.
Directed by Francis Lawrence and adapted by JT Mollner, The Long Walk is, for the most part, faithful to the novel King published under the pen name Richard Bachman in 1979. Oh, there are changes, to be sure — some bound to surprise audience members familiar with that book — but the basics are all there. The number of walkers is reduced from 100 to 50, but the core group that King focuses on is essentially the same. The rules are also the same: maintain a specified speed. Drop below it and get a warning. After three warnings, you get a “ticket,” and there’s no pleading this one in court. A ticket is a bullet to the head — or somewhere else equally lethal. Leave the road and you’ll be shot immediately. An hour of marching removes a warning. The only difference is that King specified four miles per hour as the minimum speed, but he asked the filmmakers to drop it to a more realistic three.
Each participant (all male) represents a state, and they’re as different as the melting pot from which they come. It’s interesting how the foursome that call themselves the “musketeers” become friends by circumstance. They don’t have adjacent numbers; they just happen to sit near each other while waiting for the lethal competition to get started and they hang out with each other — and become more supportive of each other — during the ensuing four-plus days of this forced march. Establishing friendships is a double-edged sword, knowing how short-lived they will be.
Both the walkers and the audience, at first, see the threat of lethal punishment in the abstract, until the first walker gets his ticket punched. This doesn’t happen right away (in the novel, a bloodstain reminds walkers that someone froze up at the start line the previous year and was killed two minutes into the walk), but when it happens, the camera doesn’t shy away from what a bullet from a carbine does to a person’s head. This isn’t video-game violence. That shit looks real. And it happens to a character viewers will already have grown somewhat fond of. And that’s just the first of many such executions. It’s relentless but the audience — and the other walkers — never grow numb to it.
Why would anyone apply to be part of such a risky endeavor? Well, as it turns out, pretty much every boy in America of a certain age is part of the lottery — sort of like being drafted to go to Vietnam, which was on King’s mind when he wrote the novel in 1966-67. The stated reason the Long Walk exists is to polarize a lethargic citizenry. There was a war years ago that had a severe impact both on the economy and the workforce. The dystopian landscape through which the boys pass is depressed and bleak. After every televised Walk, people become energized and productivity increases, at least according to Mark Hamill’s character, known only as the gravelly voiced, sunglasses-wearing fascist Major.
A more skeptical person might wonder if this authoritarian figure is rounding up young men who think. Who have ideas. Who might become dissidents. This is a world, after all, where it’s an offense to speak negatively about the Long Walk, where ideas and certain kinds of literature and even music are banned, and the sentence for speaking out against the regime is death. Sound familiar?
With nothing but time on their hands, the boys talk to and get to know each other. Their conversations range from typical teen-boy sex talk to philosophical discussions about the meaning of life — and death — and what they intend to wish for if/when they win. Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) chastises his fellow competitors for their mundane suggestions, counseling them to ask for something that money can’t buy, because they’re getting money, too. The subtext of these discussions is this: wish for something meaningful if you win, but, oh, by the way, that means I’ll be dead.
Only home-state boy Ray refuses to reveal his wish for most of the Walk, saying that it’s something he believes can change the world. A life-altering moment from his past is revealed in one of the story’s few flashbacks, providing insight into why he’s so fatalistic and determined.
The other three musketeers are Peter McVries (David Jonsson), a scar-faced orphan who says he’s been walking all his life, wisecracking and gum-chewing Hank Olson (Ben Wang) and Art Baker (Tut Nyuot), the most religious of the group. In their orbit are Gary Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer), the agent of chaos, the mostly silent Stebbins (Garrett Wareing), and Collie Parker (Joshua Odjick), who takes every opportunity to display his hate for authority figures.
The focus, though is on the growing bond between Ray and Pete, who quickly become the brothers neither of them ever had. They support each other when one of them is at risk and push each other away during vulnerable moments. Pete floats the idea of wishing for two winners in the next Walk so there’s a chance a walker and his new friend will both survive.
Although the Walk is being televised, people show up on the side of the road to see it in person. There’s a ghoulish woman dressed in black standing on the steps of a church, and a family at a picnic table. Do they really want to see live executions? Ray thinks it’s terrible, but the newly optimistic Pete, an aspiring songwriter, says he sees love at the picnic table. It’s a family — which he’s never had — doing something together. He tries his best to inspire his fellow walkers to savor the moment they’re in, even though they’re miserable.
The violence is constant. Most grueling is a scene where the already exhausted walkers have to climb a steep hill. One walker has three strikes — even a momentary lapse will be lethal. A soldier with a carbine hovers over his left shoulder like death itself waiting for him to falter. And there are other graphic details, too. You can’t walk for days without having to perform certain bodily functions, and a case of diarrhea can be life-ending.
There is a certain amount of humor to offset the bleakness, some of it very dark. They pass a faded billboard that says, “Next time…take the train!” Olson utters a a steady expletive-filled stream of sarcastic and amusing observations. And when the walkers decide to yell epithets at the Major, he is amused rather than offended. Of course, he’ll have the last laugh because most — if not all — of that group will soon be dead.
Through it all, though, there is humanity. Every time a walker stops or turns to assist a struggling competitor, he does so knowing that the person he rescues might ultimately be the one who wins the contest. Even as the numbers dwindle and the odds of success seemingly increase, and as the ordeal begins to take a toll on them emotionally and mentally, they’re unable to shrug off their fundamental decency.
Beyond the stellar cast of young walkers, there are two performances of note. Hamill, as previously mentioned, is the gruff and ruthless Major, who acts as a drill sergeant pretending to be a cheerleader. And Judy Greer, Ray’s mom, is outstanding. She’s only in a few brief scenes but I promise you, she will rip your heart out each time.
Although the source material was written half a century ago, the movie is starkly relevant today. As human rights are stripped away, those in power exploit the weak and vulnerable, turning their unfortunate circumstances into televised entertainment. The only way to win or advance is at the expense of the person next to you.
Prepare to be visually and emotionally assaulted for nearly two hours. This is a movie that’s going to stay with you long after the closing credits begin to roll over the poignant song “Took a Walk” by Shaboozey & Stephen Wilson Jr.
King’s 2019 novel The Institute was spawned by an idea he had twenty years before he wrote it. He imagined a schoolhouse — like Tom Brown’s School Days — filled with kids with supernatural abilities. Instead of behaving like the abandoned boys in Lord of the Flies, the children would band together and form a resistance. Seemingly weak people would find strength.
It was also a book about governments that grow too large and do unthinkable things under the premise that the ends justified the means. This could have been The Shop, but in the end King decided to use privately funded zealots as the villains of the piece.
Those ideas remain in the MGM+ adaptation, which wrapped up its eight-episode run recently. The writer, Benjamin Cavell, takes some liberties with the story, certainly, but the core of King’s novel remains. The first obvious change makes cinematic sense. The Institute itself doesn’t appear until fifty or more pages into the novel as King introduces Tim Jamieson, the night knocker, who will prove crucial to the book’s outcome. The series does bring Tim in early, but his arrival in Dennison, Maine is interwoven with the story of the genius Luke Ellis (played by Joe Freeman, son of actors Martin Freeman and Amanda Abbington), who is kidnapped from his family and imprisoned in the grim facility.
Another significant change: geography is compressed and relocated. The Institute is located within half an hour of Dennison (rather than DuPray, South Carolina). This means that it is close enough for people to go back and forth easily. However, it also means that the mysterious facility is the subject of gossip among the locals. Therefore, the people behind the Institute have embedded sleeper agents in town in case the facility’s secrets threaten to emerge.
The children have been aged-up for the most part, which makes some of the terrible things done to them a bit more palatable for audiences. Tim’s backstory has been tweaked a little, giving him something heavier to carry on his conscience. Ben Barnes continually reminded me of Keanu Reeves, both physically and emotionally, a quiet man with a lot of soul and a moral compass that is pure and good.
Julia Sigsby is markedly different than her counterpart in the novel. Played by Mary-Louise Parker, she’s younger, better looking, and behaves somewhat more whimsically than in the book, although it has the air of false whimsy. This is most apparent during the “graduation” ceremonies when a “recruit” transitions from the Front Half to the Back Half. She is earnest about the fact that the children are saving the world, so this excuses the torture to which she is subjecting them, although in truth Parker feels somewhat detached from the words her character is uttering.
Sigsby also gets a bit of a backstory. She lives alone on the Institute’s campus, has a tendency to burn and cut herself, and has an ill father she calls every now and then, pretending she’s a third grade school teacher. She’s also having a cold, emotionless fling in the storage closet with Dr. Hendricks (Robert Joy, who was Victor’s father in season 3 of From, also directed by Jack Bender). Joy gives the doctor a jittery intensity that makes him almost — but not quite — likeable. Julian Richings is particularly good as Stackhouse, the Institute’s menacing, ruthless, and oh-so-serious Head of Security. You would not want to cross him. He is bullying Hendricks into some off-the-books experiments. Everyone, though, is terrified of the mysterious but presumably powerful people “upstairs,” to whom they report.
Although broad swaths of the story are true to King’s novel — the progression to the Back Half, the hum, the sparklers, movie night, the crematorium — many things have been changed, too. A lot of this comes from the town’s proximity and its embedded assets, who are called to action during times of crisis. Some of the miniseries’ biggest surprises come from the things those assets do before we realize that’s what they are.
The novel’s big battle at the end is gone, and the fate of certain characters like Annie are shockingly different. Characters who survive the novel don’t make it out alive, and vice versa.
For the most part, the special effects are quite good, given the production’s modest budget. There are some awkward angle changes in the middle of scenes, and I wasn’t a fan of the slow-motion shots when Luke was experiencing psychic phenomena, but the scenes toward the end of the series, showing the Institute’s ultimate fate, are quite well done.
Finally, the series ends on an open note, with the lisping man (Jeff Fahey) sending in a team to clean up the Maine Institute, and one of the Institute’s employees escaping with a flash drive. Tim tells the surviving residents he “has a plan,” although Luke knows that isn’t quite true, and things with the talented children are left far less resolved than in King’s book. Fortunately, on the day the final episode aired, MGM+ announced that the series has been renewed for a second season, which will allow Bender and his writing staff to extend beyond the book into a whole new adventure.
It’s a miniseries — like the initial run of Mr. Mercedes — that probably won’t be seen by a lot of people because it’s streaming on a lesser-known service. Where does it fit in the pantheon of King adaptations? It’s decent, eminently watchable and occasionally thrilling. I’ll be curious to see what they come up with for the second season.
Signed copies of Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life, and Influences are still available from Village Books in The Woodlands. Be sure to specify if you’d like a dedication and/or inscription on the order form. A new edition, Stephen King: His Life, Work, and Influences (Young Readers’ Edition), came out last September, which you can also order from Village Books.
