Even Stephen King fans may feel Mr. Harrigan’s Phone isn’t worth picking up
Dial “B” for boring in this lackluster Netflix film about a teen with a haunting connection to Donald Sutherland's aging tycoon
Film Reviews Stephen King
More akin to a stern lecture by a grownup than an eerie, unsettling cautionary tale, writer-director John Lee Hancock’s adaptation of Stephen King’s short story Mr. Harrigan’s Phone might have succeeded better if it didn’t completely collapse into boomer-style commentary about how modern technology is terrible and will inevitably lead to humankind’s downfall. Though its narrative contains some subtleties, and Hancock’s aesthetic polish gives it a nice gloss, the picture’s pacing and character-driven momentum frequently sputters, ultimately leading to diminished results.
Sullen, painfully shy young Craig (Colin O’Brien) is suffering from grief over the death of his mother when he’s recruited by his tiny town’s wealthiest citizen, John Harrigan (Donald Sutherland), to read books to him three times a week. The elderly billionaire businessman—one with a reputation for ruthlessness—is losing his eyesight and, though he won’t admit it, desperate for companionship. Though Craig’s unsure why he’s been selected for the gig, his father (Joe Tippett) believes visiting Mr. Harrigan’s gothic mansion will do him good. And magically, it does.
As the years fly by, Craig (now played by Jaeden Martell) matures into a better and more sophisticated reader, able to analyze the masterpieces he’s read to Mr. Harrigan, who has also come out of his shell as a result of their interactions. Now a high school freshman, Craig’s aspirations to fit in with the popular crowd drive him to take part in the early aughts’ smartphone revolution. He drags his elderly boss into it too, setting him up with a customized phone. Yet when Mr. Harrigan suddenly dies, strange things begin happening with their cell phones—one of which is interred with the corpse.
Almost immediately, the film teases a better, craftier hook into the story than the one it pursues, involving elements like Craig’s winning lotto ticket and a jagged quarry filled with murky water. Even high school bully Kenny (Cyrus Arnold) is underdeveloped as the catalyst for Craig’s initial change: he’s conceived more as a broad caricature than an imposing, intimidating force, and consequently so difficult to take seriously that he interrupts the film’s otherwise sinister tone.
Though the film clearly means to examine whether our empathetic protagonist can be corrupted, Hancock injects this question into his story too subtly. A perhaps more nihilistic director would have been better equipped to handle it—especially since Hancock becomes bafflingly intent on wrapping things up with a trite, predictable conclusion instead of letting things be messy and dynamic. Harrigan’s ominous predictions about the internet’s corroded future—foreshadowing part of our hero’s journey—also get reduced to a clunky monologue instead of reinforcing thematic elements in the story.
That said, Hancock and his stable of frequent collaborators give the picture an alluring, semi-spooky appeal. Cinematographer John Schwartzman augments the malcontent bubbling beneath the surface of these characters and their conundrums. Production designer Michael Corenblith styles locations—especially Harrigan’s oppressive, dark-wood manse and Craig’s cozy, tidy home—with a strong, sharp contrast reflecting the opposing inhabitants’ sensibilities. Editor Robert Frazen’s use of montage breathes crisp life into the straightforward story.
Martell adapts well to King’s storytelling, after delivering an insightful, vulnerable performance in It (2017). He nimbly illuminates hidden facets of Craig’s inner conflicts, shading his angst-riddled character with compelling dimensionality. Meanwhile, Sutherland’s sheer presence drives a large part of his performance. Sitting at attention in a sharp-shouldered, wing-back chair in the kind of clean-lined suit a yakuza boss would copy (or he copied from), his character’s inspired look seems almost vampiric. He earns the film’s one intentional laugh, absolutely nailing the temperament of a misanthrope’s curt phone manners.
History’s superior Stephen King adaptations—Stand By Me, Carrie (1976), It (1990 and 2017), 1408, Gerald’s Game, and even The Shining (which King famously doesn’t like)—make the task of adapting him look easy, in comparison to less successful efforts. Hancock’s attempt evokes a forgettable Black Mirror episode more than it does any of these venerated films. Although Netflix has a solid history of cranking out King’s content (also releasing 1922 and In The Tall Grass), subscribers may not be willing to answer the call on Mr. Harrigan’s Phone.
39 Comments
Haven’t read the source material but “boring” is the only way I’ve ever seen people describe it.
“Viewers might regard Mr Harrigan’s phone as potential spam”
“Viewers might let Mr. Harrigan’s Phone go directly to voice mail”
Mr Harrigan has been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty
Hello, I’m Mr. Harrington. Are you registered to vote in this fall’s upcoming election? The [party of your registration] needs your help…
“Ni hao…”
Mr. Harrigan’s Phone only has one bar.
Just got to remember to keep him out of the contact list, so that the Silence Unknown Callers sends him straight to voice-mail.
The viewers you have called are not connected. Please check the number and try again.
I can definitely see why this would be such a tricky adaptation: “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone” was the best short story in the collection it came out in, but it’s a very low-key kind of unsettling, the kind that definitely works better in prose form. It also never devolves “boomer didacticism”; there’s commentary, but it’s all pretty reasonable and level-headed, and it never comes at the expense of the story.
The ratio of good King adaptations to bad has always seemed odd to me. I think it was Spielberg who said “he writes like he has a movie camera in his head”. If it wasn’t Spielberg [who snapped up the rights to The Talisman before it was published – not sure what ever happened with that] someone said it. His writing, even (perhaps especially) his lower-stakes, quieter works, should lend itself to easy adaptation, but… nah. When I read Firestarter I was sure it would make a great movie – now, decades later, it’s made two bad ones; and that’s just one example. “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone” is a fine story, reminiscent of Bradbury’s horror short stories, and maybe not a great choice for a movie, but it still should have worked. Oh well. The books are always there…
A lot of what makes King’s novels work is the character stuff, often happening inside the heads of his characters (think Jack Torrance or Louis Creed). Or in his cleverly written asides and “bird’s eye view” commentary in the narrative itself – like the bit in Salem’s Lot about how the town was dead but hadn’t realized it yet.But also a lot of it was just cheaply made, because horror in the 1980s and 1990s was not a genre you spent tons of money on. Still kind of isn’t one – big-budget horror films are rare. King movies with a good cast and acceptable budget often are good, like Green Mile or The Mist (or The Shining, as much as King himself dislikes that film).
I know Misery isn’t a supernatural / true horror story but that has to rank among the best adaptations. Shawshank’s in the same bucket.
I’ve never seen it, but I’ve heard it’s a good one. Misery was quite an intense book to read. Not sure if I’m up to watching the intense movie too.
The movie is no less intense than the book. Possibly more so, actually.
I think the movie is just the wrong medium. There should be more King musicals. Before Spiderman: Turn off the Dark became the standard joke for a failed musical in 2010, the standard example was 1988’s Carrie: The Musical. In fact, there’s a whole book about Broadway flops titled Not Since Carrie. Unfairly, I think. To quote the bookThose willing to suspend judgment up to now find that they no longer can as Act Two opens, according to the program on “The Pig Farm.” It is with this scene that Carrie stakes its claim to a special niche in musical-theatre history. Billy slaughters pigs for Chris (we hear “oinks” through the sound system) to obtain the blood they will use to humiliate Carrie. In the number, called “Out for Blood,” boys in leather perform dangerous choreography around and over the fire strip, which doubles here as a pig trough, chanting the refrain “Kill the pig, pig, pig.” Chris sings, “It’s a simple little gig/You help me kill a pig,” and Billy, topless and with his hair in braids, smears his chest repeatedly with the blood of the squealing pigs. When the number ends, a few applaud dutifully, but most look at the stage or at each other with mouths open, just like the audience at Springtime for Hitler, the show-within-the-movie in The Producers.
I saw a musical by William Finn about a kid who goes to venice beach and becomes a weightlifter. I think it was called “Muscle.” Worst thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life. I think he wore an inflatable muscle suit in the second act.
Muscle started off as a Sondheim musical with James Lapine—it was to be part of a double bill with Passion (probably the most divisive Sondheim musical but I love it)—the connection was both were about obsession with looks. Sondheim has one song’s lyrics for it in his collected lyric books but it never got past workshops and they decided to just do Passion. I think it was Lapine, who had directed Falsettos for William Finn, who took it to Finn but as far as I know it only ever had that one production which apparently you were lucky enough to see. Finn has done some very good work, but has had a number of rather notorious failures (Little Miss Sunshine’s adaptation was another one…)
I am generally a Finn fan(n?), this was just the worst.I mean, yes, the problem with Passion is that it’s about obsession with looks…we’re supposed to root for her to bang some hot guy…that’s the show. It’s like rooting for Roxanne to bang Christian. “wanting to bang you is not what I do it’s who I ammmmmm/wanting your schvantz is not a choice/it’s also not really James Joyce”
Oh I love Passion and utterly disagree on that LOL (but it’s by far the most polarizing show among Sondheim fans—love or hate, two emotions you don’t get with some of his other less staged musicals like Road Show for example lol) I do love the letter that was published written to Sondheim when the show opened by someone chastising him for saying that Fosca’s obsession with Giorgio was true love. As he points out, the show is not saying that—it’s about these messed up, 19th Century Italian novel characters and he was just writing for them, not trying to teach the audience what was a healthy relationship or true love or whatever.
I kinda almost wanna hear Finn’s Muscle now–after your comment I found some reviews, and it sounds like an utter disaster as you say. Sondheim was apparently trying to give it a rock score when he was writing it (which is one genre pastiche the very few times he’s tried he hasn’t mastered–I mean the man claims he never even heard the Beatles till his much younger husband in the early 2000s made him listen to them…)
“as he points out”…as who points out? the person writing the letter? because the show isn’t making that distinction as cleanly as you believe it is. I mean, even if you think it is making it cleanly enough for you, that seems to be the sticking point for a lot of people. So I need to see this lady with a hairy mole chasing this dude’s D for three hours? He read a book, whooppeeeAs I recall…I think the second act started with the guy wearing the inflatable muscle thing on Venice Beach and everybody was wearing day glo spandex and they sang a song that went “cali cali cali california!” and that’s about when I left.
Sorry, as Sondheim pointed out in his reply. Well we disagree—I think it’s pretty clear that the show isn’t trying to show that Fosca’s love for Giorgio is true and ideal love.
I find it amazing they actually just gave him a muscle suit! Wow.
I think it was supposed to be ummm brechtian? like…it’s not Damn Yankees where you just have a young guy replace the old guy. And it’s not Captain America: The First Avenger where you can CGI a stick-guy in for a big guy. And, although that guy who was in the musical of Rocky and that guy who was in the musical of American Psycho and is now on Lord of the Rings, and the person who casts the school plays might think differently, the majority of musical theater singer actors are not gym rats. Heck, I don’t know what I would have done other than…well…not put on that play. I think Pegasus also was the first company to put on Saturday Night? And it may have fared better.
Oh good point—yeah Pegasus did the American premier of Saturday Night (A year or two before it premiered at Bridewell in the UK which gave us a recording with horrible Brooklyn accents.)
You’re right—depending on how muscly they wanted the lead, it would be pretty hard to cast (although most male musical theatre leading men may not be gym rats, I will say that in the modern true, most dance chorus boys—and girls—very much are, as anyone who has seen Broadway Bares can attest too, though it’s still a different build than a body builder…)
I’ve always been curious about what became of the show, so I appreciate you leading me in the right direction to find some (awful) reviews. Here’s Variety (who sound like they may be a bit too generous towards the muscle suit).
https://variety.com/2001/legit/reviews/muscle-3-1200468803/
Also, lots of other oddities for any musical theatre geek on this… William Finn basically always does his own lyrics—I think he’s a better lyricist than composer—but for Muscle, Ellen Fitzhugh, who did the lyrics for the infamous Hal Prince flop Grind, did lyrics. And James Lapine started his musical career directing, but not helping to write, Finn’s Falsettos in its earliest versions, but here he writes the book but didn’t direct…
https://playbill.com/article/lapine-finn-and-fitzhughs-muscle-to-be-flexed-in-chicago-june-2001-com-89483
Variety is a little generous, but mostly right on. I’m sure it couldn’t be as 100% bad as I remember it…right? In any case if it comes through your town go see By Jupiter, or the Tanzanian variant of the New Zealand book of Chess, or Candide where the book was rewritten by a ferretI haven’t seen that many obscure musicals…once the Shaw Festival did Mr. Cinders? I used to go to Broadway shows more often so I saw a lot of things that should not have been on broadway, but that doesn’t really count as obscure. I would put M.u.s…cle in the same terrible category with “Whistle Down the Wind” that I saw in the West End (which was probabllyyyyy as bad as Dance of the Vampires lol)
I saw Whistle in the West End too (in its second year no less—I think it ran three). I will say it was better than a boot I’ve seen of the infamous Hal Prince production that closed pre Broadway but…
Oh, I also saw Dance of the Vampires, though the Polanski version in Austria—where the level of performance and production values at the VBW (I think that’s the name of the Vienna musical theatre rep company) was maybe the best I’ve ever seen. That’s all I can say about that (speaking of vampires I also happened to be in SF to see Lestat pre Broadway. Lucky, I guess? 😛 )
AND the same trip I saw Whistle at I saw the National Theatre’s Candide with a further script by John Caird which actually… I thought worked really well, certainly better than the previous productions I’ve seen.
For some reason I’m actually not too surprised that the Shaw Fest did Mr Cinders…
My favorite anecdote from the production of Carrier: The Musical is someone told the direct(maybe a producer) that the style of the show should be like Grease but the director thought they meant Greece. Which is why the show is full of toga like dresses and not what teenagers would actually wear.
I love that anecdote, even if I have NO idea how an established director (established for his classic play revivals mostly) got as far as seeing the designs and not realizing they thought he wanted a Greek tragedy look (well a Greek tragedy played by aliens if the weird spandex body suits the teens wear is anything to go by.) Also, Debbie Allen choreographed (part of the reason why they cast a Gene Anthony Ray from Fame in it—who reportedly usually performed stoned and his partner Charlotte D’Amboise never knew what shaped he would be in…) And if you see the bootlegs out there she choreographs it within an inch of its life—those kids in the school scenes never stop dancing.
The off-broadway revised version which a lot of local groups have done since (I’ve seen three productions here in Western Canada) gets rid of the more ridiculous moments like Out for Blood but it’s also more… well boring and works overtime to make Carrie’s mother sympathetic.
He apparently has a penchant for selling rights to people just to see what they’re capable of doing with his works, rather than curating them for the best possible outcome. It probably doesn’t help that he has SO many to choose from (esp including the short stories and novellas) that supply potentially outpaces demand.
“[I]nto boomer-style commentary about how modern technology is terrible and will inevitably lead to humankind’s downfall.”I’m not a boomer, and I’m pretty far from a boomer apologist, but can we please drop this idea that if somebody isn’t madly, blindly, enthusiastically rushing into the arms of technology, they are easily dismissed as a Luddite or worse still, a boomer? It’s silly and reductive.
Look, if you need an irrefutable example of something that didn’t get better as time went by, and in fact has become substantially worse: The A.V. Club.
And even Ted Kaczynski, aka The Unabomber although old, hating technology, and liking making things go “boom” wasn’t a Boomer. He’s too old for that and is a member of the Silent Generation. As are such people like Joe Biden and William Shatner. Not that either of those people were Unabombers.
I mean the Boomers were the one who started the computer and internet revolution. They might not be up on how to use an iPhone but they are hardly luddites.
Lord knows plenty of the complaints about how internet / social media / mobile devices have wrecked discourse and interpersonal communications are spot the fuck on. Full disclosure: Also not a Boomer.
Poor Jaeden Martell. I’m sure he deserves better than for me to think, every single time I see him, about how he was “the Nazi child masturbatin’ in the bathroom.”
Just dropping in to mention how terrible The Little Things was. Somebody should maybe revoke this guy’s director card.(tangential spoiler alert for that awful movie)They’re going to find out if they killed the wrong guy…if the murders keep happening. It’s not the same thing as pinning a killing on Ruben Carter and not caring who else gets killed, coppers.
The two recent It adaptations are not good. They are dumb “clown horror” with a whiff of King’s talent for outsider characterization. The miniseries was the closest we will likely ever get to a decent adaptation.Unless you count audio books. The Weber narrated It is fantastic.
A King story a bomb? You must be joking
No love here for The Shawshank Redemption?