We’ve moved into what Ray Bradbury dubbed “The October Country”: the time of year when the boundary thins, and all manner of phantoms, wraiths, apparitions and presences meddle in the affairs of mere mortals.
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| Although Mr. Harrigan (Donald Sutherland, right) initially wants no part of an iPhone, he quickly becomes seduced when Craig (Jaeden Martell) demonstrates some of the gadget's many features. |
Mr. Harrigan’s Phone hails from the gentler side of Stephen King, and director/scripter John Lee Hancock’s faithful adaptation is ideal for folks who prefer their cinema chills to be slow-burn unsettling, rather than in-our-face gory. Think The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption and The Body (which became Stand By Me on the big screen).
This is more of a mood piece. Indeed, the lengthy first act is a touching and completely “normal” character drama, of the sort that King always establishes so vividly in his fiction.
The year is 2003, in a fly-speck town in semi-rural Maine, where Craig (Jaeden Martell) lives with his father (Joe Tippett); both still grieve over the untimely loss of Craig’s mother. When Craig gives a reading during the weekly Sunday church service, it impresses reclusive local gazillionaire Mr. Harrigan (Donald Sutherland), who — with failing eyesight — hires the boy to read novels aloud to him.
The selections are broad: Dickens’ Dombey and Son, D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, among others. Given that Craig is somewhat withdrawn himself, he isn’t bothered by Harrigan’s gruff, authoritarian demeanor.
Following a long career during which he made his money by ruthlessly buying and shredding other companies, Harrigan has reached his twilight years with no friends or family; his only companions are a tight-lipped housekeeper (Peggy J. Scott, appropriately prim) and somewhat surly gardener (Thomas Francis Murphy).
Craig always finds Harrigan in his favorite chair, in a book-laden study adjacent to a glass-walled conservatory filled with orchids.
Sutherland and Martell are marvelous in these early sequences. Sutherland sits in an imperiously regal pose: commanding quietly but firmly; gazing watchfully, as if Harrigan expects the boy to cower and bolt at any moment. But Craig doesn’t wilt under his host’s hawk-like gaze; if anything, the dynamic makes the boy more curious.
Hancock draws a rich, subtly nuanced performance from Martell, well remembered as one of the young teens who battled Pennywise the Clown, in the recent two-part adaptation of King’s It.
As a result, Harrigan — who’d never, ever admit that he was lonely — comes to depend upon the boy’s thrice-weekly visits. Something softens in the old man’s gaze, and he begins to gift the boy with a lottery scratcher on certain holidays.
Elsewhere, Craig navigates the transition to high school in a neighboring town: much scarier than anything else in this story, as King has similarly established in countless earlier books. Hancock brilliantly conveys this prickly rite of passage as Craig and two similarly wary friends rely, during Day One, on guidance from an older “veteran” (Conor William Wright, hilariously mock-officious as the oddly named U-Boat).
Things to avoid include gap-toothed bully Kenny Yankovich (Cyrus Arnold, truly menacing, with scraggly hair and solid black clothing) and the school cafeteria, where the “cool kids” are segregated by — you gotta love this — the type of Smart phones they possess. Those with iPhones sit, loftily, well away from everybody else.
Time passes; Craig finally receives an iPhone from his father one Christmas, and — because one of those scratchers finally hits big — the boy impulsive purchases one for his “employer.” At first dismissive of such high-falutin’ tech, Harrigan succumbs when he realizes — among other things — that he can follow his beloved stock market in real time, rather than relying on day-old news in the Wall Street Journal.
But even though Harrigan is enthralled, he also recognizes the “impending” dangers presented by this seductive gadget … which allows King, speaking through Sutherland, to wax eloquent on everything the author has come to loathe about “high-tech Del Monte cans” (his words) and their power to magnify and spread misinformation and Big Lies.
(Those who assume that this story speaks with the benefit of hindsight, haven’t been paying attention; King has been grousing about such things for decades.)
Harrigan’s concerns prove prophetic, as this film moves into its second act, when these two iPhones display a disturbing ability to communicate from beyond the grave. (“Some connections never die,” the film’s tag line promises.)
At which point, the fun begins, as anticipated by the Oscar Wilde quote that opens this film: “When the Gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.”
Tippett is excellent as Craig’s calm, patient and perceptive father; he persuasively portrays a caring parent who constantly struggles to put his grief aside — not always successfully — in favor of paying attention to his son.
Kirby Howell-Baptiste has a telling role as Mrs. Hart, a kind and encouraging high school teacher who takes an interest in Craig. Howell-Baptiste’s warm smile is to die for; she’s note-perfect as the best possible instructor we’d love to have had, somewhere along the way.
On the other hand, Hancock’s script pays too little attention to Craig’s aforementioned two friends, Margie and Billy, played (respectively) by Alexa Niziak and Bennett Saltzman. One wonders why they’re in the film.
Thalia Torio gets a bit more focus as Regina, a fellow iPhone user who catches Craig’s eye. But she ultimately serves little purpose, aside from a mordant comment on the current generation’s weird behavior: Standing just a couple of yards from each other, near their respective lockers, Craig and Regina text a mutual greeting, rather than talking to each other.
Some viewers also are likely to be bothered — perhaps seriously — by this story’s failure, in the final act, to address the need to acknowledge and atone for one’s sins. This isn’t Hancock’s fault; he merely follows King’s story to its mildly unsatisfying conclusion.
Ultimately, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone probably will be enjoyed primarily for the relationship between its two key characters, both brought persuasively to life by Sutherland and Martell. Beyond that, this is King-a-bit-too-lite.
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