By William Bibbiani

Stephen King has made a lot of things scary over the years. Hotels. Classic cars. St. Bernards. Corn. That one laundry machine. Aliens that are super into butts. But in many of his stories, the greatest horror is what human beings do to each other just because they can. We all know how despicable people can be, and that’s why King’s stories still resonate. Maybe not the alien butt one, but a lot of them, certainly.

“The Long Walk” is one of those tales. It’s based on the very first novel Stephen King started writing, way back in the mid-1960s, and it plays a lot like the kind of horror story a young man would write back in the mid-1960s. The film takes place in an alternate version of the United States where the economy has collapsed after a failed war. In an attempt to inspire the American people — at least, that’s the official party line — every year a group of young men from every state are enlisted to march. Together. Until all but one of them dies.