Mr. Harrigan's Phone (2022)

Score: 3 / 5

Adapted from the recent Stephen King novella of the same name, Mr. Harrigan's Phone debuted on Netflix last week. Unfairly (and somewhat inaccurately) labeled as "horror" and put in the same lineups as other spooky October-y fare, the film is almost certain to garner negative reactions from the casual viewer. Streaming categories like that are too broad; sure, the film is technically a horror film, but there's nothing really scary in it. Someone looking for a random scary movie to cuddle up watching will likely be very disappointed with this one, marketed as it is with King's name and reputation. And yet this is very much a King story, albeit a coming-of-age one like Stand By Me. His dramas, though arguably less famous, are pretty incredible themselves; his more recent ones (this story included) tend to take on specific hot topics or social issues head-on. This one, as you might guess, targets our relationship to smart phones even as it fleshes out a remarkably touching intergenerational friendship.

Schoolboy Craig (Jaeden Martell), after reading from the pulpit at church, gets hired by the wealthiest man in the state of Maine. Mr. Harrigan (Donald Sutherland), elderly and lonely, lives an anachronistic life in his local mansion, eschewing technology and preferring to read the newspaper or sit in his conservatory among the plants. As his eyes are failing -- or so he says -- Craig is meant to read to him. Not the tawdry and depressing mess of news blurbs, but rather the literature that Mr. Harrigan keeps in his library. After each reading session, they discuss themes and interpretations of classics like Heart of Darkness and The Brothers Karamazov, building an extraordinary friendship together. Mr. Harrigan's occasionally gruff demeanor belies a sensitive soul striving for sentimental connection. We wonder about his family, if he ever really had loved ones; his business acumen seems to have been his sole passion, one he now resents to some extent.

John Lee Hancock, director of The Rookie, The Founder, and The Blind Side (but, far more importantly, The Little Things, Saving Mr. Banks, and The Alamo), helms this adaptation with a brooding sense of calmness. We can see the ways Mr. Harrigan encourages Craig to stand up for himself with a level of confidence neither of them really feels; at least the elderly man surely did at one point, as he no doubt confidently stepped on others up the capitalist corporate ladders of his career. Craig, while clearly filling a void of companionship, seems to struggle with how to help his friend reciprocally, and so gets him a smart phone on which he can track the stock market and make real-time financial decisions. Mr. Harrigan gets hooked, much to both of their wonder and disappointment. He even mentions, while clasping and swiping his screen, how much he hates being tethered to the device. How many of us feel the same loving loathing toward these little torturous miracles?

I haven't read the story on which this film is based, admittedly, but I found myself wondering how much of the screenplay was King and how much was Hancock (who also adapted it himself). Most of the film is heavy-handed posturing about the dangers of being constantly connected, and it ultimately feels like a lecture on freeing ourselves from slavery to tech. That's not un-King-like, especially in some of his recent work that occasionally bends far from pure horror. But by the point in the film that supernatural elements enter -- and correspondingly darker themes -- it feels forced, rushed, and like woefully squandered opportunities. Because Mr. Harrigan, old as he is, indeed dies of natural causes. After Craig slips the man's cell phone into his casket at the funeral, he begins receiving calls from the dead man's phone. Despairing and missing his friendship, Craig shares stories like a verbal diary, describing his bullies and struggles with school and family. And soon enough, bad things happen to those who have slighted the young man.

Had the film leaned into these elements more intently and spectacularly, it would easily have made for a chilling horror flick. There could have been fascinating artistic representations of the balance (or imbalance) of power when it comes to our age, access to technology, and even virtual power (in instances of cyberbullying, for example). It could have shown how too much information -- rather, misinformation and fake news, as Mr. Harrigan notes his fear of the cell phone "gizmo" -- can in fact lead to radicalization and violence. It could have embraced Craig's coming of age through his learning of how to mete out justice with sudden and profound power. By the end, the film vaguely hints that had Mr. Harrigan had this power earlier in his life, great horrors would have happened, and that Craig has maneuvered through his moralistic mess to choose better. But I'm still not sure that Hancock ever really gets there in any concrete way, and so the film seems content to dwell in the possibilities: haunting in its own way, but not enough to provide any chills or even chilling insights.