Mr Harrigan's Phone review: A so-so Stephen King adaptation
There’s little in this ‘don’t use your phone so much’ fable to scare you – or to get you to reduce your screen time.
The Stephen King-to-screen library can range from the sublime (The Shining, It) to the ridiculous (The Dark Tower, Thinner). John Lee Hancock’s Mr Harrigan’s Phone falls somewhere towards the bottom end, which is a shame, as it starts promisingly. Jaeden Martell, who featured in the masterly It, plays Craig, a Maine teenager who lives with his father (Joe Tippett). His mother has passed away, and he’s long felt a childish (and unjustified) sense of guilt. “If I could have controlled it, I could have stopped it,” he says.
Life changes when he gets a job working for John Harrigan (Donald Sutherland), a lonely, aged billionaire who never married and has no children. Craig (played in early scenes by Colin O’Brien) is paid $5 an hour, three times a week, to sit and read aloud classics like Charles Dickens’ Dombey and Son and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. On special occasions, Harrigan rewards Craig with a $1 lottery ticket – not exactly the most benevolent of presents. “The true value of money is measured in power,” he informs Craig.
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When the film moves on five years, by which point O’Brien morphs into Martell, it’s the first day of high school. Craig is – surprise, surprise – picked upon a loutish, lumbering kid named Kenny (Cyrus Arnold). He asks Harrigan’s advice: how do you deal with bullies? “Harshly” comes the reply from Sutherland who, even in an empty-ish supporting role, manages to make something worth watching. Then comes the rub, as Craig’s father buys him an iPhone for Christmas – just at the point the Apple tech first hits the market.
Entranced by it, Craig gets one for Harrigan, who initially dismisses the device, but as soon as he sees an app showing him stock-market numbers live, he’s hooked. Being the tycoon he is, he even wonders why the web is “spewing” all this free information out when it could be monetised. While their relationship is intriguing, the story then switches when Craig finds the old man dead. He even puts Harrigan’s phone in his coffin. But no sooner is he in the ground, then Craig starts getting weird, garbled text messages from beyond the grave.
Has Craig’s phone been hacked? Or, like the recent film The Black Phone, with Ethan Hawke, has he found a portal to commune with the dead? Seemingly, it’s the latter, when harm comes to Kenny, the brutish bully who is still tormenting Craig. Is the dead Harrigan doing his bidding? It’s very much a case of be careful what you wish for. But with this new-found power that Craig has – recalling the ‘control’ that he desired regarding his mother’s death – very little actually happens in the film’s second half.
There’s a minimal sense of danger, while King’s anti-tech rally-cry feels outdated (being “wedded” to our phones in the 21st Century is a “bad marriage”, concludes Craig, lamely). If it’s a horror film, it’s certainly a very timid one, which seems odd given that Ryan Murphy (American Horror Story) and Jason Blum (Get Out) are among the producers. Still, you can hear King’s voice coming through at points, not least when Harrigan decries Craig’s wish to become a screenwriter. “Films are ephemeral,” he says. “Books…are eternal.”
Shot by John Schwartzman, a regular DP for Hancock right back to 2002’s The Rookie, the images are crisp, while the design of Harrigan’s mansion, with its plant-filled conservatory, leans towards the stately. It’s simply that, with a story that meanders like this, the neat set-up never really goes anywhere. There’s little here in this ‘don’t use your phone so much’ fable to scare you. Or to get you to reduce your screen time.
Mr Harrigan's Phone is streaming now on Netflix. Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what's on tonight.
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