From Laos’ first and only female director (so far at least), Mattie Do, comes The Long Walk. The film, which has been touring the festival circuit since 2019 finally arrives in homes across the UK, on digital platforms, from Monday 28th February. Featuring on several “best of horror” lists, including the official Letterboxd one, The Long Walk tells the story of an old Laotian man who discovers he can travel back in time and speak to the dead.
Time is fluid in Mattie Do’s creation, the film switches back and forth between time periods so seamlessly that the viewer hardly realises it has happened. In fact, it’s only once the relationship between the Old Man and the young boy that he visits is realised, that the concept of the story travelling through time becomes clear. For a film that features time-travel in the synopsis, one could be forgiven for expecting that it would form a stronger focal point, but Do shies away from its conventional application and utilises the technique with little fanfare. As no time is spent explaining the phenomenon of how the Old Man is able to travel through time to the boy, the viewer is left to their own interpretation of how and why it is happening.
Clocking in at just under two hours, Mattie Do takes time in setting up the story and the drama. Much of the first hour is spent taking in the sights and tentatively establishing the main players of the piece. It isn’t until the second half that the film’s intentions start to assert themselves, the slower pace of the narrative allowing emotions and feelings to build up. An intimate character study, The Long Walk analyses one man at several stages in his life, the time-travel aspect of the story allowing some of these junctures to exist side-by-side. Placing the younger and older versions of the character together on-screen demonstrates just how different the two are, exploring what, how, and when he embarked on the journey to his future self.
In similarity to how The Long Walk is a science-fiction film that deviates heavily from convention, despite the presence of spirits and spectres, The Long Walk is actually very light on horror elements. This is not a film concerned with throwing lashings of blood onto the screen. Nor is it a project that concerns itself with jump scares or extended moments of tension. Instead, The Long Walk allows the horror of character actions and intentions to provide the more uncomfortable moments. To call The Long Walk a cerebral chiller would be a close, but not an entirely accurate, description of the film. There are aspects of horror housed within the film, ones that are mainly accessed via the mind, but even then it would be a stretch to call it a horror film. The ghosts present here are not there to traumatise the viewer, or the characters, but act as a literal manifestation of the ghosts of the past.
A horror that isn’t strictly horror, and a science-fiction which is not obviously science-fiction, The Long Walk utilises components of these popular genres but contorts them until they are almost unrecognisable. With so much distance from the norm, The Long Walk challenges the viewer to reassess the story from different angles, allowing the emotional core of the narrative to pour out.
The Long Walk
Summary
The Long Walk operates in the space between genres and in doing so breaks from conventions and deviates from expectations in all the best ways.
The Long Walk will be released on Digital Download from Feb 28 and available for pre-order here.
