‘Mr. Harrigan’s Phone’ Review: Cell Service From the Afterlife
Dennis Harvey Film Critic Located halfway between the coming-of-age nostalgia of “Stand by Me” and the horror content of … well, nearly every other Stephen King-derived movie, “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone” ends up too mild on either count to make a memorable impression. Still, John Lee Hancock’s adaptation of the same-named novella (which led off King’s 2020 collection “If It Bleeds”) handles the rather thin source material adeptly enough to make for an entertaining middleweight drama tinged with the supernatural. It premieres on Netflix Oct. 5, getting Halloween month off to a moderately creepy start. Craig (Colin O’Brien) is still a child when his mother dies of cancer in 2003, leaving him alone in his Maine small town with an equally bereft father (Joe Tippett). It is a welcome distraction, then, when his Scripture recitals in church attract the attention of Mr. Harrigan (Donald Sutherland), a billionaire financial tycoon who’s retired to this nondescript burg in order to spend his twilight years out of the spotlight. His eyes are failing, so he offers Craig a regular after-school gig of reading aloud from literary classics — starting, rather inappropriately, with “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” but soon embracing Dickens, Conrad, Dostoevsky and so forth.