Mr. Harrigan's Phone: A flawed connection

Mr. Harrigan's Phone (2022) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, occasional profanity and fleeting drug content

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.14.22

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.

 

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.

Hollywood always responds appropriately.

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 Given that Craig is somewhat withdrawn himself, he isn’t bothered by Harrigan’s gruff, authoritarian demeanor.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.

Doctor Sleep: Ultimately a yawn

Doctor Sleep (2019) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated R, for violence, dramatic intensity, profanity, disturbing images and nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.8.19

When asked how he can stand to have so many of his books and stories ruined by bad movie adaptations, Stephen King is fond of quoting James M. Cain, who faced the same question in the wake of his novels being sanitized — to the point of absurdity — by 1940s and ’50s Hollywood morality standards.

Against his better judgment, but forced by dire circumstance, Dan Torrance (Ewan
McGregor) once again finds himself in the malevolent hallways of the dread Overlook Hotel.

“They’re not ruined,” Cain growled, pointing to his bookshelf. “They’re all right there!”

King can point to a much larger shelf, and it would be overstating to claim that director/scripter Mike Flanagan completely botched his handling of Stephen King’s sequel to 1977’s enormously popular The Shining. The first two acts of this film adaptation are impressively faithful to the 2013 novel.

The third act is something else again. 

It destroys the good will Flanagan has built up to that point, while demonstrating the arrogant hubris of filmmakers who believe that all books — and plays, TV shows, whatever — are ripe for “improvement.”

I’m not referring to the judicious trimming required to condense (in this case) a 528-page novel into a 151-minute film. Flanagan skillfully removed a couple of supporting characters, nipped here and tucked there, and trimmed the extensive attention paid to a hopeless alcoholic not yet ready to become sober (while retaining the issue vividly enough to make its point).

No, I’m much more troubled by Flanagan’s decision to completely re-write the ending, while simultaneously indulging in a mean-spirited viciousness wholly at odds with the tone of King’s book. The result is simply wrong, although intriguing from an analytical point of view: Flanagan’s first two acts honor King’s text, but the ill-advised third act plays more like a clumsy sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s’ 1980 adaptation of The Shining … which also screwed up its source material.

(Flanagan should have learned from previous mistakes, given his equally failed 2017 handling of King’s Gerald’s Game.)

A prologue finds young Danny Torrance and his mother relocated to Florida, only a short time after the events in The Shining: as far removed as possible from the freezing, claustrophobic Colorado snows that surrounded the dread Overlook Hotel. But its phantasms still haunt Danny, until the kindly specter of Dick Hallorann (Carl Lumbly, regal as always) teaches the boy how to deal with such vengeful shades.

Flash-forward several decades. Dan Torrance (Ewan McGregor), long tortured by his “shine,” has succumbed to the alcoholism that helped transform his father into the monster so easily corrupted by the Overlook’s supernatural residents. Constantly fleeing from bad situations, Dan hops a bus and randomly steps out in bucolic Frazier, N.H. He soon encounters Billy Freeman (Cliff Curtis), who senses all is not right with this newcomer. Dan responds to this random act of kindness, late one night, by knocking on Billy’s door and saying the three magic words: “I need help.”

It Chapter Two: Two much of a good thing

It Chapter Two (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for dramatic intensity, profanity, highly disturbing violent content and gore
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.6.19

This impressively creepy chiller delivers a relentless 100 minutes of gruesome, appalling, terrifying, look-between-your-fingers heart-stoppers.

Having made their way into the heart of Evil's lair, our heroes — from left, Bev (Jessica
Chastain), Mike (Isaiah Mustafa) and Ben (Jay Ryan) — are confronted by yet another
in an endless wave of ookie-spooky monstrosities.

Director Andy Muschietti and scripter Gary Dauberman leave no horror movie cliché neglected — no phobia unexploited — in their handsomely mounted, atmosphere-drenched conclusion to Stephen King’s 1986 best-seller.

Unfortunately, this film runs 169 minutes.

It doesn’t matter whether we’re discussing chocolate milk shakes or cinematic shocks; indulge too much, and the result simply becomes bland.

Which is ironic, because the best part of 2017’s It was the clever way in which Muschietti and his writers — Dauberman was assisted that time by Chase Palmer and Cary Fukunaga — stripped away the over-written dead flesh of King’s 1,138-page exercise in diminishing returns. With this second “half” of King’s saga, they’ve succumbed to the same self-indulgent excess.

Quite a pity. Particularly since the first two acts are — no question — macabre and terrifying at every turn.

Doesn’t matter what irrationally frightens or repulses you; Muschietti and Dauberman tap into it. Spiders? Claustrophobia? Disgusting flying bugs? Long, dark hallways? Slithery, worm-like nasties? Naked old people?

Clowns?

Clowns with massive, jaw-stretching, needle-sharp teeth? (The better to eat you with, my dear…)

There’s actually much to admire in this grim fantasy’s concluding installment, starting with an ensemble of well-cast actors who persuasively feel like grown-up versions of the first film’s adolescent heroes. Dauberman also manages the clever feat of integrating this sequel with its predecessor’s events, while simultaneously making it a coherent stand-alone experience for anybody unfamiliar with that 2017 entry. (Likely no more than one or two of you, but still…)

It: A horrific good time

It (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for bloody violence, frequent profanity and crude behavior
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.8.17

This one has teeth.

Literally.

Having determined that their supernatural tormentor's home base is the very-very-very
creepy haunted house at the outskirts of town, Bill (Jaeden Lieberher) advises an
all-for-one-and-one-for-all assault: a suggestion met with incredulous unwillingness by,
from left, Ben (Jeremy Ray Taylor), Richie (Finn Wolfhard), Bev (Sophie Lillis),
Eddie (Jack Dylan Grazer), Stanley (Wyatt Oleff) and Mike (Chosen Jacobs)

Director Andy Muschietti’s handling of Stephen King’s It is that rarest of creatures: a film adaptation that is superior to its source novel.

Despite being undeniably scary, King’s 1986 chiller is a bloated, self-indulgently over-written mess at 1,138 pages: a slog even for the author’s most dedicated fans. Scripters Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman have pared down the book quite deftly, discarding the parallel narratives and retaining only the (far superior) kid-centric half of the saga.

The result plays like a coming-of-age blend of Stand By Me and TV’s Stranger Things, albeit far nastier ... as befits the storyline. Muschietti and his writers retained the essential plot beats from King’s novel, while accelerating the thrills and chills by subjecting the key characters — and us viewers — to a relentless barrage of impressively scary/creepy tableaus.

This campaign of terror is orchestrated by one of King’s finest creations: Pennywise the Clown, played here with viscerally shocking intensity by Bill Skarsgård. Between his, ah, behavior, and the way Muschietti choreographs said activities, impressionable viewers likely won’t sleep well for weeks.

I don’t say this lightly. Since 1979’s Alien, I could count — on the fingers of one hand — the films that have well and truly frightened me. Muschietti’s adaptation of It makes the list, and with good reason: He understands the true nature of fear. Unlike too many contemporary horror filmmakers content to repulse viewers, short-term, by wallowing in gore, Muschietti messes with our minds ... which is as it should be.

Anticipating the worst — not knowing precisely what’s coming, albeit having a dismayed notion — plants a much more powerful anxiety bomb in our nervous little heads. Muschietti plays us like a fiddle.

Which is not to say that this It is without its gruesome moments. Hardly. Muschietti bares his atmospheric fangs right from the start, which (of course!) leaves us unsettled for the rest of the ride.

That’s only half of the equation. This film’s success also derives from the exceptional work by its young ensemble cast, which brings a level of emotional resonance — even poignancy — that is likely to surprise folks. Genuine pathos in a horror flick? That’s an unusual combination ... and that’s precisely why the story grabs us so persuasively.