Craig (Jaeden Martell) just won’t shut up about his time reading novels to local billionaire Harrigan (Donald Sutherland), the deadly fallout that ensued and what that all meant to him, an impressionable youth with a new iPhone. There’s the near-constant voiceover, the first and perhaps most damning sign of a weak-willed adaptor. Harrigan’s Phone has several red flags on speed dial. Written and directed by John Lee Hancock, a genre-agnostic filmmaker who helped get Sandra Bullock her embarrassing Oscar for The Blind Side before turning to other forgettable dramas, Mr. King continues to enjoy his smartphone, if his Twitter presence is anything to go by, but he certainly won’t like Netflix’s dead-battery adaptation of his story. More sweet than scary, more thoughtful than frightful, it takes us on a little trip to Steve Jobs’ Pet Sematary. Harrigan’s Phone, his novella from the 2020 collection If It Bleeds, is an ode to the iPhone. With King especially, as a writer who made injections of pop culture-listening to the Stones, drinking Coke, popping an Advil-one of his down-to-earth signatures, watching him acclimate to and integrate new technology into his stories is a rare perspective-shifting gift. Reading the autumnal work of a decades-spanning master like Stephen King is enriched not only by the experience that comes with age, but by the shifting ages themselves.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |