“The Long Walk” - Walk it off.

By sheer coincidence, I attended a screening of The Long Walk just two days after walking around Disney World for three days. If you have never been to Disney World, I can assure you that however much you think people walk there, you are vastly underestimating. As luck would have it, I know approximately how far I walked because both my wife and our friend wore fitness watches counting our steps.

I figured the final tally would be somewhere around ten miles over those three days, fifteen miles tops. I wasn’t even close. Turns out it was a literal marathon, somewhere between twenty-six and thirty miles (more than 59,000 steps). Now, imagine doing more than ten times that, but with no breaks. That’s what the contestants do in The Long Walk.

My recent experience is only a fraction of The Long Walk, but it’s a useful starting point. After my first day of walking roughly twelve miles, my legs were dead tired, my calves were sore, my back was stiff and achy, I was dehydrated, and I was developing blisters on both of my little toes. I did what I could the next two days to avoid worse blisters and pulled muscles. On the flip side, all that walking was constantly interrupted by standing in line for rides, riding those rides, standing in line for food like Mickey pretzels, and sitting down to eat those pretzels. Don’t worry - I’m not looking for pity. I know where I was.

In other words, I have an inkling of what the The Long Walk might feel like. However, unlike the characters in The Long Walk, I didn’t have to maintain a three-mile-per-hour walking pace. I didn’t get warnings for slowing down (they get a maximum of three but can erase a warning for every hour they go without an additional warning). I didn’t have to try to sleep while walking. Or poop while walking. And I certainly didn’t have to cope with anyone in my group being gunned down because they ran out of warnings and slowed down again. Even in Florida.

On the positive side, like the characters in The Long Walk, I shared the experience with friends (and family). Being able to talk to people is a great distraction from the monotony of walking miles upon miles. In the film, there are several characters that get plenty of screentime, the two most prominent being Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) and Peter McVries (David Jonsson). The two form a bond just before the walk begins, eventually leaning on each other through the walk like brothers, if not lovers. Complimenting these two are Arthur Baker (Tut Nyuot) and Hank Olson (Ben Wang), forming a friend group that easily makes the viewer forget the walking for several lengths of time.

It's not all high-fives and bro-hugs, though. Stebbins (Garrett Wareing) and Gary Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer) are adversaries to Ray and Pete’s quartet, though I wouldn’t go so far as to call them villains. Stebbins is all but a machine and kind of a dick and Barkovitch is a loose cannon. Think of them as that squabbling family yelling at one screaming child while shoving a stroller haphazardly in the middle of the Epcot walkway. You silently curse at them, desperately willing them to park the stroller, shove a churro in the kid’s mouth, and get out of the way. Trigger-happy soldiers pacing us doesn’t seem like the worst idea at that point. Again, Florida.

When my Disney trip was over, I was quite satisfied, despite my blistered toes. I did not feel the same way when The Long Walk cut to credits. A little of that is my fault. I read the original Stephen King story (same title) thirty years ago and I’ve been waiting that long for an adaptation. Along the way, I think my memories of the story drifted a bit, along with my expectations for a film version. Don’t get me wrong, the film is decent. Good, even, if you really like character- and dialogue-driven stories where the tiny bit of action is mostly on the sidelines. Think Stand By Me, but without the leeches.

But most of my very mild disappointment is the movie hasn’t been updated for our times. As one person pointed out in a post-movie discussion panel, the story can be interpreted as an allegory of the Vietnam War. A platoon of conscripted young men on an endless walk, constantly in danger of being shot, and doing so for a very fuzzy reason. I understand historical dramas, but why make an exceptionally faithful adaptation of an allegory of something that happened fifty years ago whose commentary won’t even be recognized by anyone under the age of sixty?

I was also mildly disappointed that the film didn’t give us anyone to really root against. Stebbins and Barkovitch are developed such that they still inspire plenty of sympathy. The Major (Mark Hamill) responsible for conducting the Long Walk is a classic bully, but he’s really more of an idea of a bully; a voice from off-camera that inspires little more than an eyeroll as he barks military cliches at the walkers. And the crowds of people who line the streets in the book, hoping to glimpse death, are removed from the film altogether. So, when the final walker is eliminated, there isn’t much resolution because they didn’t really overcome anything. It’s just...done.

In other words, it’s one of those times when a film probably needed to wander a bit more from its source material. I don’t mean anything crazy like the 1987 The Running Man adaptation. But it could have leaned into a character or two hallucinating from sleep deprivation (not unlike me after 3 days at Disney), in addition to a little more villainization. Hamill wouldn’t have to go full Darth Vader, but a little more Jafar would have been nice. A bit more of the verbal psychological warfare to emphasize which of them really only cares about the prize awarded to the last man standing. And bringing the spectators back to emphasize how far the world around them had fallen. This would have given the end of the film much more weight and satisfied the audience. Even the ones who were just at the happiest place on Earth.

Rating: Ask for five dollars back or a Mickey pretzel.

“The Boogeyman” - Reliving childhood fears.

My first scary movie was the original Poltergeist. I was around eight years old at the time and my dad thought it would be a good idea to let me watch it. He was wrong. I distinctly remember being terrified by the scene where Robbie is dragged under the bed by the scariest stuffed clown ever made. When my ten-year-old son asked if he could go with me to see The Boogeyman, that damned clown flashed through my head. After Poltergeist, I wouldn’t go near my stuffed animals for weeks, and my son is currently going through a phase where he has to turn on every light in the house before walking within twenty feet of a dark room. So my response was no. He won’t be seeing The Boogeyman any time soon. If I had taken him with me, I’d be fetching clothes from his closet for the rest of our lives.

The boogeyman is a monster we’re all familiar with. Traditionally, it’s the thing parents tell their children will get them if they misbehave. In The Boogeyman, that fable is turned around - it’s the thing that will get children if parents stop paying attention.

The Boogeyman is based on a short story by Stephen King (originally published in 1973 in Cavalier magazine, then published as part of an anthology of King stories called Night Shift) in which a man explains the deaths of his three children to a therapist. Rather than try to turn that single conversation into an entire film, screenwriters Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, and Mark Heyman tell a story that is effectively a sequel to that conversation. That conversation still happens as the prologue to the film. Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian) barges into Dr. Will Harper’s (Chris Messina) home office, Lester insisting that he must tell someone the truth about the monster (the boogeyman) responsible for the deaths of his three children. Upon entering Harper’s house, Lester unwittingly exposes the Harpers to the boogeyman. We learn that the it attaches itself to damaged families, thrives on frightening its victims, and eventually kills them after finding new victims to torment.

The Harpers are the epitome of a damaged family. Will’s wife was killed in a car accident and he and his two young daughters, Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) and Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair), are dealing with the loss. This kind of tragedy and sorrow is like catnip to the boogeyman. The film plays out in the standard format. The boogeyman starts small, slinking in the dark, nothing but a shape moving in the background or corner of the frame, scaring the girls in little ways. As the film moves on, the boogeyman escalates the scares to whet its appetite, frightening the girls (and the audience). All the while, Will is going through the motions of parenting, dismissing the girls’ warnings that something is in the house. As the film moves toward the climax, urgency sets in as Sadie uncovers information about the boogeyman, primarily through Lester’s wife (Marin Ireland). It sets up the classic showdown between the heroes and monster, ramps up the tension until it is palpable, and ultimately comes to a head.

Like all good horror flicks, The Boogeyman works because the boogeyman is hidden from view for most of the film, using our imaginations against us and cranking up the suspense. It’s a smart play since all of us have, at one time another, imagined what might be deep in the shadows of our closets. And not like the cute cuddly “monsters” of Monsters Inc., but the terrifying monstrosities of Cloverfield or Aliens.

Another smart decision was keeping the cast small. The majority of the movie features only the three Harpers, nicely fleshed-out characters in whom the audience easily becomes invested. We sympathize with Sadie as she deals with high school nonsense and her increasing desperation to get anyone to believe her about the boogeyman. We fear for Sawyer, who always seems to be a hair’s breadth from a gruesome death. And we all but scream at Will to WAKE UP! LISTEN TO SADIE! THAT CLOSET DOOR DIDN’T OPEN ITSELF!! Other than the Harpers, there is Lester who only appears in the beginning of the film, Lester’s wife Rita (Marin Ireland) who provides some exposition and an action scene, a therapist named Dr. Weller (LisaGay Hamilton) who is more of a prop than anything else, and a quartet of high school girls who serve no purpose to the film whatsoever. If I have one complaint about this film, it’s that those high school girls do not exit this film in any kind of satisfying way.

Many of Stephen King’s adaptations have caused us to cover our eyes, but often for reasons that have nothing to do with being scared. The Boogeyman is not one of those films. It has smart writing, good suspense, and solid performance from the characters that matter. Most importantly, it delivers what we want from horror movies - scares that are so good, we’ll have trouble sleeping that night, wondering what that sound was or if we remembered to close the closet door. You did remember to close it, didn’t you?

Rating: Don’t ask for any money back, but maybe ask to keep a light on in the corner. Just in case.