Mr. Harrigan’s Phone – A Disappointing King Adaptation

Over the years, dozens of film adaptations of the works of Stephen King have been produced. His short stories seem to have a certain appeal in the eyes of screenwriters because they provide them with enough blank space to introduce their own creative vision into the mix. He has a knack for coming up with intriguing concepts that can be interpreted from multiple different angles and one rarely feels as though he casts too wide of a shadow over films like Stand By Me and Christine. Filmmakers can count on King to possess a level of mutability that is rare among bestselling authors and, as a result, they seldom turn out adaptations that feel as though they have been weighed down by their literary origins. 

Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is one of those disappointing entries in the Stephen King media empire, in that it fails to do anything more than offer a thuddingly literal transferal of the text to the screen. The relatively thin plot traces the coming of age of Craig (Martell), a shy, introspective teenager, who has to endure being violent bullied at high school. He shares a close friendship with Mr. Harrigan (Sutherland), a mysterious old man with a dark past. When Harrigan dies, he leaves Craig with a sizeable inheritance, but Craig is astonished when his deceased friend begins to send him texts from beyond the grave. Before long, he begins to cotton on to the fact that Harrigan might be connected to the string of tragic suicides that have occurred in town.

From the very beginning, one can tell that the script is laden with far too much expository dialogue. It makes sense to lay out the basic tenets of the plot within the first act but John Lee Hancock also feels the need to have Craig blurt out self-aware analysis of his own troubled emotional state. Viewers are expected to accept these ponderous musings at face value, instead of being given enough space to laugh at some of the more subtly humorous interludes in the film. Hancock seemingly wanted to pepper a little bit of dark humor into the peripheries of a fairly generic horror formula but he doesn’t have Edgar Wright’s light touch. At every turn, he is far too willing to let this story unfold in a heavy-handed manner and this approach eventually becomes oppressive. When one does not have the freedom to draw their own conclusions about what’s happening on screen, they lose out on half the fun of watching a film. 

Mr. Harrigan’s Phone also lacks the formal polish of Netflix’s other major horror releases and fails to exploit the implicit creepiness of high schools. Every location featured in the film looks perfectly ordinary and mundane. There is no implication that Harrigan’s mansion harbors all sorts of terrors that are just waiting to be let loose on the outside world. He appears to reside in a sterile, sparsely decorated living room that doesn’t seem gloomy in the slightest. Even Craig’s high school, an environment that serves as the source of most of his traumas, is painted as a familiar location. There aren’t any points at which one would shudder at the sight of the familiar being juxtaposed with something that appears to be foreign and threatening. Everything remains deeply inoffensive and the smartphones that King passionately rails against end up blending into the scenery. 

It is unlikely that this piece of anti-modernist propaganda will motivate viewers to throw their phones into the river and purchase a newspaper from a financially struggling corner store. The film addresses a couple of timely issues but one is sure to end up wishing that King would draw out slightly more sophisticated analysis of these topics.

In the end, viewers can see the ending of Mr. Harrigan’s Phone coming from a mile away. This just isn’t as thrilling as a chiller about a murderous old age pensioner should be. 

still courtesy of Netflix

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Zita Short

I am passionate about screwball comedies from the 1930s and certain actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood. I’ll aim to review new Netflix releases and write features, so expect a lot of romantic comedies and cult favourites.