Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, despite featuring good lead performances, never scratches the itch of a spooky season feature. Only lightly dabbling in the otherworldly aspects, it does provide a fine coming of age story…if that’s what you’re looking for.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers
Mr. Harrigan’s Phone
Directed by John Lee Hancock
Written by John Lee Hancock
Starring Donald Sutherland, Jaeden Martell, Joe Tippett and Kirby Howell-Baptiste
Mr. Harrigan’s Phone Review
Have you ever sat down and thought about the incredible number of film and tv adaptations of Stephen King works that have been produced? He’s provided the base for some of cinema’s most memorable films. The Shining, Carrie, The Shawshank Redemption, Stand by Me…the list goes on and on. Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is not in that memorable category.
It’s not that Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is a terrible film…it isn’t. The biggest problem with the new Netflix movie may just be its release date. We are now officially in spooky season where every new horror release gets peak attention from an audience craving thrills and scares. Mr. Harrigan’s Phone isn’t trying to be that movie.
Craig (Jaeden Martell) becomes friends with elderly billionaire Mr. Harrigan (Donald Sutherland). After Mr. Harrigan dies Craig discovers that they can still communicate via the cell phone he gifted, and buried with, him. After confiding to Mr. Harrigan’s voice message problems he’s encountering, those problems start being solved…in a permanent fashion.
There are opportunities for frights in the set-up…but Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is more interested in telling a coming-of-age story. It’s a decent one, mostly thanks to the performances of the two lead actors. Unfortunately, the story is too often bogged down by a slow pace and a lack of character development around the leads.
The strangest thing about Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is that the story shifts radically halfway through…but the movie really doesn’t. Essentially it begins as a story about friendship and ends up as a movie about supernatural vengeance. Only…this turn somehow never changes the feel of the movie. The easiest, and most satisfying, thing that the movie could have done was to fly off the rails when the story shift happens. Director John Lee Hancock seems determined to keep the film as grounded as possible.
Mr. Harrigan’s Phone just never has any fun with the concept. Truthfully, it never has any fun at all. Slow burns have their place. That place is directly before an explosion. Mr. Harrigan’s Phone never explodes. The movie slowly crawls from scene to scene even when the story begs for more excitement.
Which makes its position as one Netflix’s October original movies all the odder. If this had been released at another time of the year it would have come and gone as an inoffensive, unmemorable little movie. Putting it in October virtually guarantees that the people it is most targeted at will add frustration to those assessments.
Scare Value
While its release date is hardly the movie’s fault, you are bound to have certain expectations of a Stephen King adaptation released in October. Mr. Harrington’s Phone doesn’t aim to deliver on many of them. What’s here is a perfectly watchable, if slow, coming of age drama featuring top notch performances from its two lead actors. If you are looking for a bit more thrill for Halloween season, however, it’s an easy pass.
2/5
