It is not, as much as Netflix sells it as a horror movie, a horror movie. It is more, and better, a tale of suspense and morals, like many of the stories Stephen King. Mr. Harrigan’s phonewith Donald Sutherland Y Jaeden Martell (Element), is just that: a suspenseful film that never lets the viewer go.
Craig is just a kid when he loses his mother, and if he couldn’t get it over with, not to mention his father (Joe Tippett), with whom he can barely converse. So when the Title Lord (Sutherland), a single billionaire living in a mansion, housekeeper and gardener, offers you $ 5 an hour (it’s the beginning of the 21st century) and asks you to come to his mansion for read him some literary classics, Craig agrees.
As the years go by and Harrigan wonders how he continues to accept the deal, when as a teenager he could very well spend his free time with his friends and girlfriends, Craig’s answer (that we won’t ruin you) throws him off balance. and moves him. .
When the first iPhones come out, Craig gets one from his father and buys one himself from Mr. Harrigan. It is 2008 and the old man has a dim view of this device. He distrusts the information he provides – free of charge -, and warns about what we all know by now: fake news, attachment to technology and many things that the modern world offers us and that perhaps, instead of helping us to communicate, move away.
Of others, and of the truth.
But this is a Stephen King story, so when Mr. Harrigan can no longer breathe even with the help of an oxygen tank, Craig greets him by leaving his (Mr. Harrigan’s) iPhone in his suit pocket in the coffin. . This is how he will be buried.
And what you imagine happens
Yes, what you imagine happens. Craig leaves him messages and gets cryptic replies from that cell phone.
And how Stephen King likes it, when he has protagonists between children and young people, who are harassed by some other big shot. Craig obviously happens to him. And sometimes the wishes spoken aloud, have you seen that they have come true?
Mr. Harrigan’s phone it’s as simple and concise as good suspense stories. There is something inexplicable, as in the novels and short stories of the author of The glow, bring Y animal cemetery-, but what the protagonists can use in their favor. Or not.
John Lee Hancock is not a director who has characterized himself for accepting this kind of story. Director of in need of energywith Michael Keaton, Walt’s dreamwith Tom Hanks, o A possible dreamfor which Sandra Bullock won an Oscar, she deals with the unfolding of the story and not with the sound effects that can disturb the viewer’s tranquility in their living room.
Donald Sutherland, well, Sutherland has always been an actor who worked best with his gestures and silences, and young Jaeden Martell (Bill Denbrough, one of the friends of Element, Between knives and secrets Y the creepy hut) lends his surprised face whenever asked, and takes center stage without exaggeration or extra gestures.
In short, a good entertainment with something supernatural, but which is not a horror or horror film, if not a fine and well done suspense.
“Mr. Harrigan’s Phone”
Good
Suspense. United States, 2022. Original title: “Mr. Harrigan’s phone”. 104 ‘, SAM 13. Of: John Lee Hancock. With: Donald Sutherland, Jaeden Martell, Joe Tippett, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Cyrus Arnold. Available in: Netflix.
Source: Clarin
