Movie Review: Mr. Harrigan's Phone (2022)
Synopsis: After his mother dies, a young Craig Poole is hired by the wealthy John Harrigan to read to him three times per week along with various other chores, a job Crag continues into his teen years because he begins to consider Harrigan a friend and mentor. When Harrigan dies, Craig places the smart phone he had purchased for the elderly man in the coffin with him and, after receiving an $800,000 inheritance, calls the phone to leave a thank you message on the voice mail. The next morning, he receives a text message from Harrigan, which is becomes convinced is just a hacker or a glitch. However, when he calls the phone again, to complain about a bully at school, Craig begins to believe it might be something more after that bully is found dead the next day.
Who's in it? The movie stars Jaeden Martell, Donald Sutherland, Joe Tippett, Colin O'Brien and Kirby Howell-Baptiste.
Review: I let my wife pick out a movie for us to watch last night and after scrolling through several on Netflix, she decided to give Mr. Harrigan's Phone a try. I wasn't sure what to expect from the movie based on the limited information in the trailer. As I told my wife, it could be a creepy and suspenseful film, or it could be very dull. As it turns out, it was neither of those things.
Even after sleeping on it, I'm not sure what genre I'd place this film under. It has a very real supernatural element to it, but I wouldn't consider it a horror film or thriller because there wasn't any sense of impending danger for the main protagonist, Craig (Martell). However, that supernatural part did disqualify it (at least in my book) as a traditional coming-of-age drama as well.
Genre aside, the movie did prove to be intriguing. At first, my wife and I thought it was going to be something as simple as someone retrieving the phone from the coffin after Craig placed it there. However, once it became clear that wasn't the case and the phone, instead, was proven to be buried with Harrigan (Sutherland), it became a question of just how far Craig would take this new-found ability to talk to the dead and what would it do to him in the process.
Interestingly enough, I thought the film would have been a good film even without the supernatural twist. Sutherland shined in one of his final movie roles before passing away in real life last year. Harrigan had quite a bit of depth, seemingly unapproachable but deceptively kind. You could feel the bond between Harrigan and Craig and that could have allowed their story to go in a more traditional route and still been interesting to watch.
Harrigan also made some interesting, insightful points about cell phones and their addictiveness. It wasn't anything that necessarily became the focal point of the movie but the events that followed his death sure did drive them home a bit.
My only real complaint about the movie is I would have liked to have seen it keep the mystery about the phone's whereabouts for a little longer. This was a film that just seemed like it was destined for a surprise twist, such as Craig's dad (Tippett) being the one who was secretly replying to him and killing his enemies. Keeping that a possibility for a little longer would have only improved the movie in my opinion.
Final Opinion: It wasn't quite what I was expecting but the movie was intriguing, and we were both curious about how it would end. It's worth taking the time to watch at least once, even if it's just to remind yourself how talented of an actor Sutherland was and how much he will be missed.
My Grade: A
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