Mr. Harrigan's Phone - Another Failed Attempt in Adapting Stephen King's Brilliant Work

After concentrating on another series, yesterday I was looking for something else and browsed through various streaming platforms till I came across this movie. As it was said to be based on Stephen King's work, I was immediately intrigued to give it a try. Well let us get to it then.

Brief Story Line

High school student Craig (Jaeden Martell - It, Defending Jacob mini series etc) had been working as a book reader for an old wealthy billionaire Mr. Harrigan (Donald Sutherland - Ad Astra, Dirty Sexy Money TV series etc). It started not long after Craig's mother passed away few years earlier and he was living alone with his father (Joe Tippet - Mare of Easttown TV series etc) ever since.

As their friendship grew stronger, Craig managed to convince Mr. Harrigan to start using handphone where he became attached with it. And when Mr. Harrigan died, Craig who felt loss would still give a call to his handphone. Things started to get weird when there seemed to be a response from the phone.

So how would the story conclude? You can find them out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

This movie was a bit unusual to me. It was narrated from the point of view of Craig since his childhood and seemed to be focusing a lot on him growing up & his relationship with the successful old businessman and not a single horrifying or terrifying scene at all. Not until half way through the movie that it began to have a bit of mystery. But even then, it did not raise a creepy or eerie feeling. It just felt flat all the way till the end.

Now the story itself might have been better read rather than adapted into a full movie, after all it was based on novella which is shorter than a novel. The idea was definitely interesting (once again showing how brilliant Stephen King is) but this is another example of how difficult it is to make a great movie out of his works. What I really felt missing in this movie was how it did not seem to have a real spark and no real climax scene. The ending was a bit too standard as well. This is surprising considering the film was written and directed by John Lee Hancock who was experienced in making critically acclaimed movies such as The Rookie, The Blind Side, Saving Mr. Banks and few others.

I did however find the relationship between Craig and Mr. Harrigan to be the highlight. Both Jaeden Martell (who now used his mother's maiden name instead of his family name Lieberher) and Donald Sutherland were pretty good in portraying their roles. Aside from them, there were also few other support cast with two of them familiar to me. They were Kirby Howell-Baptiste (Cruella, The Sandman etc) and Cyrus Arnold (Run Hide Fight etc) as the teacher Ms. Hart and the bully Kenny respectively.

Overall I was not that satisfied with the movie as the emphasis was only on the coming of age rather than the horror side of the story. Despite the convincing performance of the lead cast, the lack of spark and the flat feeling I had throughout without a proper climax, made this not as enjoyable as I would have hoped for. In the end, sadly this became just another failed attempt in adapting Stephen King's work.

Mike's movie moments rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars