Film Review: MR. HARRIGAN’S PHONE (2022): Stephen King Adaptation is Slow-Moving and Only Occasionally Interesting

Mr. Harrigan’s Phone Review

Mr. Harrigan’s Phone (2022) Film Review, a movie directed by John Lee Hancock, written by John Lee Hancock and Stephen King and starring Donald Sutherland, Jaeden Martell, Joe Tippett, Colin O’Brien, Kirby-Howell Baptiste, Frank Ridley, Peggy J. Scott, Thomas Francis Murphy, Randy Kovitz, Cyrus Arnold, Thalia Torio, Conor William Wright, Alexa Niziak, Bennett Saltzman, Daniel Reece, Dale Duko, Gregory Jensen and Andrew O’Shanick.

John Lee Hancock has crafted a story from Stephen King’s horror anthology book, If it Bleeds, into a full-length movie. While most audiences would have probably liked a straight horror movie, the new film, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, is more philosophical than horrific and the picture is so slow moving, you could probably walk out for a few minutes, come back to the movie and have missed very little in terms of plot development. The balance between horror and drama is attempted by director Hancock to little degree of success. He should have picked a different tone for the film, preferably a more terrifying one, in order to sustain audience interest.

Grounded too much in reality (especially in the opening scenes), Mr. Harrigan’s Phone revolves around a teenage student named Craig (Jaeden Martell) who befriends a rich, much older man named Mr. Harrigan (Donald Sutherland) after the loss of his mother. Having lost his mom early in life, Craig feels a certain void in his life. Craig takes a job or two for the older gentleman and reads classic books like Heart of Darkness to him while doing mundane tasks for this man in the interim. They form a bond over time and learn to appreciate one another. Harrigan inspires the young teenager which gives him the initiative to do things he would have been too shy to do otherwise. The movie showcases a type of lottery ticket that is distributed to Craig and ends up being a lucky ticket for Craig to play at one point. Craig soon gives Harrigan a popular type of cell phone which is buried with the old man when he dies. All this plot development takes much too long to transpire.

When Harrigan is six feet under, Craig starts receiving text messages that seem as if they are from Harrigan, himself. However, the movie is not so simple to be that type of horror movie where everything that appears to be happening is literally happening. This movie is deep and requires the audience to make their own decisions as to what, exactly, is going on when Harrigan seems to be communicating with Craig in a type of “morse code,” if you will. That means only Craig can really decipher what Harrigan is trying to say via these messages, if these messages are even from Harrigan at all.

This movie is wise to focus on the way Harrigan became successful and the film hints at this character’s regrets in life while showing us a character (Craig) who has his whole life ahead of him. The juxtaposition of these two characters is certainly interesting throughout the early stages of the movie.

There are also some good performances here besides the two solid ones given by Sutherland and Martell. Joe Tippett as Craig’s dad offers a surprisingly complex turn while Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Mrs. Hart, Craig’s teacher, is excellent. Howell-Baptiste shines in every scene she’s in and it’s easy to see why Craig admires her. Mrs. Hart means a whole lot to Craig, as stated, which foreshadows heavy drama that will result in the film later on alongside some bullying that happens to Craig as well which creates tension within the plot.

One flaw of Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is the use of a song which was in the movie Vanilla Sky (I won’t tell you which one but it is a key song from that movie) and it’s played at a point late in the movie where it seems very out of place. It feels like someone from the film-making team liked the song but it doesn’t really fit the dramatics of the sequence it is used in. Another flaw is the movie’s slow-moving plot which moves at the speed of a snail. By the time, the movie finishes all its revelations, it’s over but so much valuable time is spent on things which really don’t carry much weight and the plot doesn’t have enough twists to make the patient viewer feel rewarded.

The film’s premise is interesting but it doesn’t really fulfill the promises of its truly intriguing basic premise. One could only imagine that this story line could go a number of places but Hancock (and the story from author Stephen King, himself) keep the movie grounded and more realistic than it should have been to please true horror fans.

Still, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone offers the incomparable Donald Sutherland in a role that has some meat on it. That may be reason enough for some viewers to want to see it. Stephen King fans, however, may feel the author has become too reliant on the details behind mundane events rather than focusing on the terror that made his earlier work so successful. Apt Pupil comes to mind as a better film because it went further with the horror although that film had some problems as well. There is a lot of rich detail in Mr. Harrigan’s Phone but the plot is awfully threadbare making it somewhat of a disappointment overall.

Rating: 6/10

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