I Would Walk 500 Miles

Film: The Long Walk
Format: Market Square Cinema Theater 2

When I was a Junior in high school, I was just starting out as a horror fan. Around that time, it was revealed that Stephen King had published five books under the name of Richard Bachman. Four of those books were published in a single volume called “The Bachman Books.” I liked all four of them but of them, The Long Walk was the best of them. It is not an exaggeration to say that I have been waiting 41 years for this movie. It is a brutal, vicious book, and I was hoping that the translation to film would be the same. The Long Walk has some significant differences, but it tells the story extremely well.

You’re going to hear people talk about this in the weeks ahead, and they are going to make comparisons to things like The Hunger Games and Battle Royale, and I’ve heard someone dismiss it as just a new version of Squid Game. Please know that this came first—King’s book was published in 1979. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that this is derivative of those stories, since those stores came later.

Ten Days of Terror!: I am Legend; The Omega Man

Films: I am Legend; The Omega Man
Format: DVDs from Lasalle Public Library through interlibrary loan (Legend) and Sycamore Public Library (Omega) on laptop.

I don’t go to the theater that often, but I saw I am Legend when it was first released. I was hopeful, having seen the first two versions of Richard Matheson’s story, The Last Man on Earth and The Omega Man respectively. I had hopes because this looked like a version that was going to really have the look of a truly apocalyptic situation. The other films had this in part, but not to the extent that this did in the trailers, and that’s something that was instantly appealing to me.

Unfortunately, this is my least favorite of the three versions of the story. It’s got the biggest budget by far and it would seem to have the most going for it on the surface, but like the other two versions, it punks the ending completely. None of the three versions have managed to get the ending to Matheson’s story correct, opting instead for something much simpler and much less interesting because of it. My disappointment here may simply be that I had much higher hopes for this one than I did the other two versions, so the failure is that much bigger.

Off Script: Constantine

Film: Constantine
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on The Nook.

Constantine is the sort of movie that I really want to like. It’s more or less The Matrix with overt theology rather than implied theology. Constantine has a clear position in terms of the spiritual world. Like many a film that deals with demons not just as monsters but as actual characters, we’re dealing with a more or less Catholic world view. The world of Constantine purports that God and Satan have essentially a pact that Earth is off limits. They can’t use direct influence on the world but can influence the world through agents that exist in the world, people who are angelic or demonic half-breeds.

Our hero is John Constantine (Keanu Reeves), a man with the ability to see these half-breeds in their true form. Constantine has always had this “gift,” and when he was a young man, these visions forced him to commit suicide. Technically, he didn’t survive the suicide attempt and was dead for two minutes, which he spent in Hell. As a suicide, Constantine is forever damned despite anything he might do in this life. Either in spite of this or because of it, he spends his days finding demonic agents and sending them back to Hell, knowing that it might be the right thing to do and similarly knowing that because of his motivations, it will do nothing to save his soul.