In 1979, Stephen King published The Long Walk, one of several books he wrote using the pseudonym Richard Bachman. “I did that,” he later wrote, “because back in the early days of my career there was a feeling in the publishing business that one book a year was all the public would accept.” His secret identity was eventually discovered, so he published a collection of these works in 1985 as The Bachman Books.

Our reviewer called The Long Walk “a neatly told suspenser,” and it absolutely is that, telling the story of alternate, dystopian future America that stages an annual event for which 100 teenagers are chosen by lottery. The kids start the Long Walk in Maine at the Canadian border and proceed down the assigned route, through a number of small towns, until only one competitor is left—there’s no finish line, only survival. Along the way, they must maintain a speed of four miles per hour, with soldiers following in military vehicles; if a competitor fails to go fast enough, they get a warning. After three warnings in an hour, they’re shot to death. The last teen standing wins a huge sum of money, as well as “the Prize”: a wish for anything they desire. A new film adaptation puts the suspenseful, gory spectacle onscreen, and it premieres in theaters on September 12.

The book’s premise is so simple that you have to marvel at King’s skill as he wrings an absolutely gripping novel from it. He does so, mainly, by focusing on the Walkers themselves, including Ray Garraty, the central character, whose father was disappeared by the ruling regime; Peter McVries, a boy with a dark, troubling past who befriends Garraty; and Gary Barkovitch, a loathsome jerk who expresses a desire to dance on the other players’ graves. One bespectacled competitor tells of his unlikely dream to write a book about the Walk; another, from the South, muses on his uncle’s undertaking business as one kid after another meets a gruesome death. It’s a page-turner that works very well as a grim horror story—like a slasher film, it centers on a group of teens dispatched, one by one, by brutal killers—but it also works on deeper levels, beyond visceral thrills and chills.

Some critics have characterized the book as an extended metaphor for the Vietnam War, as the boys are selected for the Walk via a draftlike lottery, are motivated by a vague sense of potential glory, and are supervised by a military officer, surrounded by impassive thugs with carbines. The participants go on to die horrific deaths in a seemingly pointless enterprise. It’s a valid interpretation, with plenty of support to back it up.

However, it’s hard not to see the novel, more generally, as an extended riff on toxic masculinity. The Major, who runs the Walk, is a stereotypically hypermasculine man with a mustache and mirrored sunglasses; the Walk itself is for boys only, and, at one point, the kids pass a government building with a chilling sign that reads “MAY IS CONFIRM-YOUR-SEX MONTH.” By its very nature, the Walk discourages compassion, camaraderie, and friendship—and rewards selfishness at every turn.

Interestingly, the book also explores how a regressive view of manliness informs Garraty’s struggles with his own queerness. Witness this passage, in which he quietly doubts a rumor that two leather-jacketed Walkers might be in a relationship: “They didn’t look effeminate, and they seemed like nice enough guys.…not that either one of those things had much to do with whether or not they were queer, he supposed.” Garraty occasionally has sexual fantasies about his high school girlfriend, but just before the Long Walk starts, he also notes that “up close,” the Major “smelled very masculine and somehow overpowering,” and the boy represses “an almost insatiable urge to touch the man’s leg and make sure he was real.” Later, mid-Walk, McVries bluntly proposes a sexual act, and the exhausted Garraty briefly considers it: “The thing was, he wanted to be touched. Queer, not queer, it didn’t seem to matter now that they were both busy dying.” However, he can’t seem to admit to himself that his sexual orientation might be more complex than he thought; for example, he thinks back to when he was much younger, playing “Doctor’s Office” with a boy named Jimmy, and how his confusion about it later led him to cruelly strike his friend with the butt of a toy rifle, leaving a scar.

In the end, though, Garraty never has the chance to come to terms with his sexual orientation. In fact, few Walkers get the chance to come to terms with anything important in their lives. They’re all too busy doing what their society expects of them: Marching down a long road with a 1% chance of hitting the jackpot—and a 99% chance of failure, followed swiftly by oblivion.

As such, The Long Walk could also be seen as a representation of anxieties about adulthood responsibilities; after all, King began writing the novel in 1966, when he was still a teenager himself. The maximum age for participation in the Walk is 18, and nearly all those who sign up do so simply because everyone else does—just as, in real life, so many young men get married, get a job, and have kids solely because they’re expected to do so. One of the Walkers, an initially hale-and-hearty teen named Scramm, is already working and has a pregnant wife, which prompts Garraty to wonder “why he hadn’t managed to grow up any.” King’s story may have a simple setup, but it contains multitudes.

The film adaptation is impressive in many ways, although it’s ultimately less ambitious than King’s book. On paper, The Long Walk seems distinctly uncinematic, with its extended scenes of kids trudging over pavement. However, the filmmakers—who helpfully decrease the number of Walkers by half at the start—make sure that viewers get to know these kids, and they’ll find it easy to become invested in their fates. These aren’t the disposable teens of a Friday the 13th movie; they’re fully fledged human beings trying to connect with one another—which offers a rare bit of light in all the darkness.

Screenwriter JT Mollner (Strange Darling) intriguingly focuses on this light, mainly by changing the character of McVries. He’s a much kinder person in the film, who decided long ago to look for the good in life, and in people, despite experiencing many tragedies. If he wins the Prize, he says that he’ll help other struggling young people like himself. Later, when a character reveals that his motivation for competing in the Walk is simple revenge—an element that’s also new to the film—it’s McVries who attempts to talk him out of it. The character’s compassion works wonders for the film, offering a real ray of hope. The novel concludes on an extremely dark, even nihilistic note; the movie changes the ending, and viewers will surely be divided on whether it works. It struck this reviewer as a misstep—a strange stumble at the finish line after a solid run.

The film is directed by Francis Lawrence, who helmed four of the five Hunger Games films, which were also about teens in a lethal competition in a dystopian, authoritarian society—although The Long Walk is much bloodier than those movies were. Still, Lawrence is highly skilled with this kind of material, and he gives his actors plenty of space to shine. Licorice Pizza’s Cooper Hoffman affably portrays Garraty as a likable everyman (although, unfortunately, the character’s queer struggle is virtually absent), and Small Axe’s Tut Nyuot and Karate Kid: Legends’ Ben Wang are standouts as fellow Walkers. Spontaneous’ Charlie Plummer is also quite good as the awful Barkovitch, and Mark Hamill—who memorably appeared in another King adaptation, The Life of Chuck, just a few months ago—is suitably chilling as the gruff, jingoistic Major. However, it’s Industry’s David Jonsson, as the earnest McVries, who delivers the most affecting performance—one that, for a while, sounds an unexpected but welcome note of inspiration in a violent world.

David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.