Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like The Long Walk:
28 Years Later
Few film franchises feel as reflective of their eras as the 28 Days Later franchise. The 2002 original remains one of the most influential horror films of the century, with Danny Boyle’s grainy, handheld style perfectly matching its atmosphere of isolation and dread. Its 2007 sequel, 28 Weeks Later, wasn’t directed by Boyle or written by Alex Garland, and while it had moments, it left fans with a sense that more could be done with the premise. Now, both Boyle and Garland return for 28 Years Later (2025), a film that feels both like a homecoming and a cautious step toward something bigger.
Salem’s Lot
The success rate for movies adapted from Stephen King stories seems small, and factoring in only his horror stories, that rate gets even smaller. Many times, it’s because the dread and horror from the main characters is internalized in a way only easily conveyed when reading their thoughts on print. Because of this, the likes of a few iconic Stephen King novels have never been properly and successfully adapted to the big screen.
Blood Simple
Nearly every time I revisit Blood Simple, I’m struck by how confident and precise Joel and Ethan Coen were right out of the gate. Released in 1984, Blood Simple is the Coen brothers’ debut film and still stands as one of the greatest first features ever made. A neo-noir steeped in paranoia, betrayal, and bloody miscommunication, it’s a film that knows exactly what it wants to be—lean, stylish, and razor-sharp.
The Gorge
The Gorge, Scott Derrickson’s latest film for Apple TV+, is a frustratingly uneven blend of action, sci-fi, and romance that starts with promise but ultimately succumbs to convention. Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy do their best to elevate the material, and their on-screen chemistry carries the movie’s far more compelling first half, but by the time the action-heavy second half kicks in, The Gorge loses much of what made it intriguing to begin with.
Nightmare Alley
Guillermo del Toro has built a career on finding beauty in darkness, crafting stories that, even in their bleakest moments, hold onto some sense of wonder, nostalgia, or hope. Movies like Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, and his stop-motion Pinocchio remake all explore the perseverance of the human spirit, even in the face of terrible atrocities. That’s what makes Nightmare Alley such a striking outlier in his filmography—it’s a film almost entirely devoid of hope, a cynical neo-noir that suggests people are, at their core, selfish and opportunistic. Instead of offering redemption, Nightmare Alley leaves you with a sick feeling in your stomach, hammering home its central thesis: trust is a liability, and grifters will always find a way to exploit it.
The Last Stop in Yuma County
Francis Galluppi’s The Last Stop in Yuma County probably won’t reinvent the wheel, but hopefully it’s a sign that we’ve found a new director that’ll do his best to keep slick, low-budget genre exercises alive. These down-the-middle genre movies (excluding horror) are hard to come by nowadays.
Rebel Ridge
Jeremy Saulnier is continuing to show that there aren’t many filmmakers capable of making movies like he is. Rebel Ridge occasionally establishes him as an auteur capable of extreme visceral sequences and building up tension that will make you squirm in your seat, but I’m not as sold on his attempt to tie these themes to this story. A good movie made by a director capable of making great movies.
The Monkey
The Monkey is a middling but watchable entry in the 2025 horror slate. It doesn’t reach the high bar set by of Oz Perkin’s best films, nor does it fully honor the emotional undercurrents of King’s original story, but it’s never boring. If nothing else, it reaffirms Oz Perkins as a horror director worth watching—even when the material doesn’t quite land.
Doctor Sleep
There is supposedly a better director’s cut of Doctor Sleep out there that fills in the gaps of a few character traits, motivations, and decisions. Honestly, I’m not sure I care. This is about as rigorous and uninteresting as any horror franchise rebooted in recent memory. It’s a glossy, airless, and ultimately unnecessary return to a world that was perfect as is.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes emerges as a nuanced and energetic prelude to the Hunger Games saga. By unraveling the roots of power in Panem, the film injects vitality into a franchise that appeared to be on the decline. Despite pacing issues and a divergence in energy between the two halves, the film stands as a compelling adaptation in the young adult genre, breathing life into a story thought to have concluded.
Read our full review of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes