The Long Walk (2025)

No monsters, but be warned: this is the most brutal film on the list. Francis Lawrence adapts the 1979 novel King published as Richard Bachman, in which teenage boys in a dystopian America walk until they drop, and any boy who falls below the pace is shot. So why is it here? Because underneath the cruelty it is a film about friendship under pressure, carried by Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson as two walkers who keep each other going. Critics backed it, singling out those two soulful performances. Choose it if you can handle violence but not the supernatural, and expect to think about it for days.