We Don’t Own Things. Things Own Us.
Main Cast: Donald Sutherland, Jaeden Martell
Director: John Lee Hancock
If you’ve seen the trailer for this one, you’ve seen the movie, so I’m gonna burn through this synopsis pretty quickly.
John Harrigan (Donald Sutherland, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS as well as being a Hollywood legend) is a billionaire recluse living in small town Maine who hires ten-year-old Craig to read to him three times a week for $5 an hour. First from the TBR is LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER, followed by DOMBEY AND SON, HEART OF DARKNESS, and THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY? among other classics. This goes on for five years before Craig (now played by Jaeden Martell, IT, THE LODGE, ARCADIAN) decides to buy Mr. Harrigan a present with some lottery scratch off winnings, and appears at his employer’s home with a then-new iPhone4.
Upon learning of the vast wealth of knowledge at his fingertips, namely real-time stock quotes, Mr. Harrigan becomes a devotee. Soon after this, John Harrigan, a self-confessed dealer of “harsh” punishment to those who wrong him, dies, leaving a grieving Craig $800,000 in trust for college.
At the funeral, Craig slips Mr. Harrigan’s phone into his pocket, calling him later to leave a voicemail telling him thank you for the money, but he’d give it all back if he could have his friend back. See, over the years, Craig has come to like spending time with Mr. Harrigan. He doesn’t see the tyrant others see; instead he sees a man of strong will who knows what he wants and doesn’t let anything or anyone stop him from getting it. This is a trait the young Craig was missing, coming from a home with a dead mother and long-grieving father.
But life must go on, and Craig still has high school to get through. After a run-in with a bully, though, Craig calls Mr. Harrigan’s phone again to tell him what happened. He knows the old man is dead, but it’s hard to let go of their time together. Then the bully winds up dead.
This isn’t a spoiler, the trailer for this one pretty much tells you entire plot of the movie, and it wasn’t exactly a killer plot to begin with. I first read the Stephen King novella in his 2020 collection IF IT BLEEDS, and I wasn’t all that thrilled with it the first time around. Maybe that’s why I waited two years after it came out to see the film adaptation. Well that, and I kept forgetting it existed.
But we had some time to kill on Sunday and the wife suggested, instead of me showing her a movie I’d already seen and enjoyed, we watch something I hadn’t seen before. Now I’m kinda wishing I’d insisted on either THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX or BIRD BOX again.
Not that MR. HARRIGAN’S PHONE is a BAD movie. It’s competently made, from writer/director John Lee Hancock (THE BLIND SIDE, THE FOUNDER). It’s just that the story itself didn’t set me on fire the first time, and this was a pretty faithful adaptation, so if you’ve read the source material, you’re not getting anything new, except it’s over a lot quicker. Well, you do get to watch Donald Sutherland, and that’s always fun.
Maybe it’s because I’m watching a Stephen King movie, and it’s got horror elements baked into the plot, a dead man’s revenge on behalf of one of the only people who ever LIKED him when he was alive, and I’m not scared at all. I’m not even freaked out. And that’s NOT the fault of the director or the actors, it’s the plot. King’s original story just never did it for me, despite being an engaging read. I could see what he was going for, technological horror, death via iPhone (King has said he doesn’t use a cell phone, but that was 20 years ago, so maybe it’s changed?), but it always seemed, to me, to be the plot of a newer writer, as if it was written by someone imitating King. I mean, I know we all have stories we love that don’t quite hit the mark with readers, but the plot for this one just really left me shrugging. It always felt, to me, like the sort of plot you’d find in an issue of TALES FROM THE CRYPT, an 8-page backup maybe.
And then the movie adaptation comes along, and we’ve got an opportunity to at least see some excellent gore only to have the only two deaths attributable to Mr. Harrigan’s ghost happening offscreen. Which immediately eliminates the threat of Mr. Harrigan’s ghost, reducing him to a possibility but not a reality. Because Craig never receives confirmation that Mr. Harrigan was definitely responsible for any of the deaths that take place here, so this whole thing could be chalked up to coincidence. I don’t believe it is, but what the hell do I know, I’m just a spectator.
Now, does all this mean you should avoid MR. HARRIGAN’S PHONE? I don’t know. Like I said, it’s competently made. Sutherland and Martell do fine work and Hancock is a decent director. I just feel like, overall, this movie is the Netflix equivalent of the old Stephen King TV mini-series they used to make. It’s King, it’s technically, horror, but it’s watered down for family viewing. It’s SAFE horror, and I grew up watching THE SHINING, PET SEMETARY, and CREEPSHOW for God’s sake. King, in my mind, is synonymous with HORROR with a capital all the letters. But then there’s stuff like STORM OF THE CENTURY, BAG OF BONES, RIDING THE BULLET, the King on TV catalog and it’s just … meh. And that’s how this one feels. It’s there, I’ve seen it, I can take it off the list now and move on with my life.
Watch MR. HARRIGAN’S PHONE if you’re intent on watching every King adaptation. If you’re a casual viewer, go watch BIRD BOX again.
King on Film
Word Processor of the Gods (1984)
A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987)
The Last Rung on the Ladder (1987)
Sometimes They Come Back (1991)
Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (1992)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (1995)
Sometimes They Comes Back … Again (1996)
Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering (1996)
The Revelations of ‘Becka Paulson (1997)
Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror (1998)
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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