Mr. Harrigan (Donald Sutherland) is a prickly old businessman who hires Craig (younger: Colin O’Brien, older: Jaeden Martell) to come a few hours a week and read him novels.  All too eager to escape the house which feels so empty after his mother passed away, Craig begins helping around the manor with the daily chores and grounds work, until one day, Mr. Harrigan is found dead.  After the funeral, Craig begins to receive strange text messages from Mr. Harrigan’s cell phone, and as strange acts of karma begin to get served to the bullies in Craig’s life, the boy begins to think that Mr. Harrigan is offering his protection from beyond the grave. 

Written and directed by John Lee Hancock from a short story by Stephen King, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is a modern ghost story released by Netflix.  The story comes from King’s 2020 anthology If It Bleeds and has some of the author’s signature touches to it; set in a New England town, a bullied child’s coming-of-age, and of course the supernatural.  Set in 2001, the story allows King to air his distrust of technology as the iPhone makes its debut on the marketplace and while he does allow cell phones to hold a little more use in this story than in his 2006 novel, Cell, which turned callers into murderous zombies, the skeptic stance is tired and the script seems to know that too as it only engages in these fears at the most surface level.  There are few stories more perfectly poised to be able to take an informed look at the place which technology holds in our lives, but instead, it shades Mr. Harrigan as a technological Nostradamus who preaches his fears about screen addiction and fake news to Craig who just lets the old man ramble on as it is just easier to do so.  The criticism, while valid, is a little too on-the-nose, a clear “I told you so” from the author in light of recent events, and it is made worse because Hancock’s script never actually engages with the issues it brought up other than to brag about being right. 

Sutherland’s presence as the title character adds an air of legitimacy to the film as the elderly businessman, but the role finds the actor mostly passive and chair-bound as Craig reads to him from his collection of tomes.  The atmosphere brings a feeling of menace and unease to the character as Craig discovers some old headlines that document the mogul’s vicious and ruthless rise of buying up companies and dropping them to turn a massive profit.  Had this been a full novel from King, it would likely alternate chapters between Harrigan as an old man and then on the rise to business, with a host of connections to his past exploits mirroring what is happening to Craig, or the people in his life.  What we do see posits that Harrigan, in his earlier years, delivered the touch of death to all the companies he touched, and the community around him.  The film does not engage too heavily with that narratively interesting concept, other than there is a poor side and a rich side of town. 

Shouldering the burden of the film is Martell, no stranger to the horror genre, and King’s work as one of the lead losers in Andy Muschietti’s adaptation of It (2017).  Even with the sparse material to work from, Martell handles the role well and brings his usual affable presence to the screen to welcome audiences into the world of the film.  His voiceover which guides the film is a little uninspired, but that is more an issue from what is on the page than a note on the performance.  Craig is just very dully written; the boy is not given much to latch on to or build from other than having lost his mother some years prior, and again this is more for some added script convenience so that he only has to answer to his father.  Unfortunately, like the script, the production design does no favors for the up-and-coming star, either, asking him to portray a character from freshman year of high school, up until his first year of college while never doing so much as to even change his hairstyle.  In the final few sequences, he is given a much more mature wardrobe, but he maintains the distracting look of a young teen throughout. 

If you were to overlook the film’s incredible simplicity, the biggest crux is in how it handles the passage of time.  It is nice that Hancock just moves the story along without stopping for title cards and instead requires audiences to place themselves on the linear timeline by the various school and social events.  It is just a shame that there could not have been more done to help show this progression of time.  As is, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is stretched too far across its narrative timeline and spread too thin to fully support the 104-minute runtime.  Hancock does wrap things up before it begins to really try the patience of audiences, but with so many ideas hinted at, the film cannot help but to feel half-baked.  There is so much narrative interest there just under the surface that is left unexplored, and that is not even a criticism pointed at the matter-of-fact conclusion which asks for blind acceptance of the matter from the audience.  The film ends up feeling more like a collection of good ideas, and, frustratingly, the connective tissue is all there and teased at, but never explored. 

There just is not enough on the screen to comfortably recommend Mr. Harrigan’s Phone.  It is not that it is even a bad film, but one so perfectly mediocre that it is instantly forgettable.  The framework is present throughout, but the script never capitalizes on any of the ideas that it sets up.  It shies away from all the dynamics it sets up to help fill out the world of the film; Kenny (Cyrus Arnold) is a toothless bully, Ms. Hart (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) the science teacher is a pure archetype there to build sympathy before being done in, and Regina (Thalia Torio) as the romantic lead is wholly unexplored and quickly cast off.  The film finds itself in a strange situation where the world is so wide that because it does not go into enough details, it feels like nothing is happening and that stagnation is a tough feeling to shake even as the narrative does start to unfold. 

Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is a simple plot with enough elements of a neat ghost story that unfortunately just leaves us hungry, not so much even for more from this world, but rather, for a better version of this story.  It never seeks to explain the why and the how of the events of the film, and that in and of itself is fine as it is a fool’s errand to try and give a watertight explanation for the supernatural, but the film plays so loose that those elements are hardly even recognized by anyone but Craig despite the very real consequences this phenomenon has on the small community.  Like a Twilight Zone episode stretched beyond its means, while the concept is engaging and amusing to keep up the interest of the audience, as the narrative continues to flail and tread water, it is hard to compete when there is a bevy of alternative titles just a few button clicks away.