The Long Walk Review: Mattie Do brings a new wave of cult horror

Lao horror director Mattie Do makes films where the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is porous, but the people who cross it often pay unimaginable costs for the privilege. In her feature film debut Chanthaly (which she is posted on YouTube) the title character can communicate with her dead mother, but only if she forgoes the heart medication that keeps her alive. Do’s second movie dearest sister (available from Shudder) shows a young woman beginning to see the spirits of people who are about to die, but only after she develops a degenerative eye disease. Confronting the spirits turns them into a vessel for lottery numbers, but it also sends them into debilitating fits. The long walk, Do’s third collaboration with her screenwriter husband, Christopher Larsen, offers her premier spirit medium the most complicated risk-reward analysis of all. Conceived as a loose trilogy, the films invent nothing less than Lao national horror cinema.

In case it wasn’t clear yet The long walk is not an adaptation of the popular 1979 novel by Stephen King, published under his pen name Richard Bachman. The film revolves around a character known only as the Old Man (Yannawoutthi Chanthalungsy), a hermit who lives on the outskirts of a small village in Laos and makes a living by selling scrap metal. 50 years ago, when he was a little boy, the old man witnessed the death of a woman in the jungle, and her spirit (Noutnapha Soydara) has accompanied him on his daily walks ever since. Not only does he conjure up her spirit as company—with her help, he can travel 50 years into the past to intervene in his own unhappy childhood. The changes he influenced in his past reverberate in his present – a broken glass case here, a trail of corpses there. As he struggles to come to terms with the aftermath of his time travel, the film becomes more critical of its subjects.

Do slowly reveals the inner workings of the plot, and for long stretches it is difficult to place the plot in time or place. An early scene in the dusty street market, where the old man is hawking copper wire, sees him scanning a vendor’s phone with his arm. A microchip embedded in his skin accepts payment, and the salesman taunts him for his outdated technology. It’s a confusing moment – wait, what year is this? — and Do continues to overlay it with additional questions. There’s a bit of David Lynch’s opacity in her willingness to show something flashy that audiences won’t understand at first, and a bit of Apichatpong Weerasethakul in the way she revels in negative space and atmosphere. Unlike these directors, however, Do embraces the simple, visceral joys of genre cinema. The first third of The long walk feels discursive and dreamlike, but once the pieces come together, the film picks up steam and the dream turns into a nightmare.

The patient characterization of the old reflects the gradual opening up of the film. At first, Do and Larsen present him as a cipher, and his behavior seems bizarre and puzzling. Once The long walk introduces his time travel component, his motivations begin to come into focus. When the old man was a boy, his mother died of a painful lung disease, and his father left the family farm to work in the capital. Seeing his mother suffer in her final days radicalized the old man and motivated him to offer the women of the village suicide assistance, though it’s worryingly unclear if the women he’s guiding to peaceful deaths are actually asking for his help have asked. Subsequent journeys through the time portal alter and reframe his actions, and a fiery climax forces him to reckon with life, or more accurately, Life he is led.

In a fascinating 2020 interview with Thirteenth floorcall The long walk her “tranquil, supernatural sci-fi, time-travel, serial killer, Asian art-house film.” The freedom with which she moves between these genres gives the film much of its power. While a more true sci-fi version of this story might become obsessed with the mechanics that enable her time travel, Do trusts her audience will simply accept it as a storyline and put up with the results. A typical crime thriller might focus on the crime aspects of what happened to the woman who dies in the jungle or the noodle shop owner who turns up dead at the old man’s house at the beginning of the film. That never happens. For a film with such a complex plot, The long walk remains firmly committed to the vibes.

As far as that The long walk covers any genre, it’s a ghost story. As in Do’s previous two films, emissaries from the spirit world both start the film’s plot and are a real force in the lives of its still-mortal characters. This is partly thanks to Do’s distinctly Lao perspective. “We’re still very traditional in a lot of ways,” she said Senses of cinema in 2017. “We still believe in possession, we still believe in haunting, we still believe in rebirth and reincarnation. If I said I was being followed, no one would say, ‘No, you won’t.’ They would ask for more details. You’d believe me in a heartbeat.” All of this is evident in the strikingly straightforward way ghosts appear on screen in her films. in the The long walk, the police don’t think the old man is crazy talking to ghosts. They ask him to help them contact one.

The so-called “sublime horror” movement, embodied in films like A24’s The witch and Hereditary, with its own tropes and conventions, has become an established force in genre cinema. What is fascinating about Do’s work, and The long walk Specifically, she draws on that tradition while creating something that feels entirely new. The long walk is full of simmering suspense, complex emotional drama, deliberate pacing, great cinematography, and striking, horrific imagery. At the same time, it does not particularly resemble the babadook, Saint Maud, or one of his other “elevated” peers. That has a lot to do with Do’s Lao heritage and at least as much to do with her inspirational go-for-broke attitude. It’s a film that initially seems minimalistic, but slowly emerges as wildly, vividly maximalist. It takes a little patience and will be generously rewarded in return. It’s by far one of the best horror movies of the year.

Do is widely regarded as the first Lao horror director, as well as the first female director to direct a film in Laos. This has given her a unique opportunity to shape a national cinema in her own image. Her films thrive on the clash of old and new, of ancient beliefs and futuristic technology, of idyllic landscapes and city streets choked by honking tuk-tuks. In the best way possible, it feels like she’s making it up to her over time. The long walk makes a compelling argument that viewers should follow her.

The long walk is in limited theatrical release and is available for rent and purchase on digital streaming sites such as google play and youtube.