Netflix’s latest Stephen King trailer focuses on Mr. harrigan

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Image of an old man looking at an iPhone box.
Image: Netflix

Netflix has released the trailer for his latest Stephen King adaptation, Mr. Harrigan’s phone, which is based on the short story of the same name. In the trailer we see Craig, played by Jaeden Martell (who starred in the recent It adjustments and Blades off), a band with the titular Mr. Harrigan, an elderly billionaire played by Donald Sutherland (President Snow in The hunger Games and mr. Bennett in 2005 Pride and Prejudice).

According to Netflix’s description, the film is about Craig and Mr. Harrigan’s bond over their first iPhones, seemingly allowing them to stay connected after the older man dies. The trailer, of course, seems much more sinister; the boy leaves a voicemail for the man after he is dead, which leads to his being called back and his bully found dead. (Hopefully the movie is better than that other Netflix adaptation with a similar concept. Thankfully, Netflix has a decent track record of making movies from Stephen King stories.)

One quirk that’s almost distractingly obvious in the trailer is how old the phones are. Mr. Harrigan gets what looks like an original iPhone, and later in the trailer we see Craig using an iPhone 4 or 4S. The short story that adapts the film is not from that period – it was published in the 2020s When it bleedsbut maybe it’s just more believable that the characters get their first smartphones in the late 2000s rather than jumping in with the iPhone 14 Pro Max.

Image of a boy putting his ear to a freshly worked grave.
Image: Netflix
If I got texts from a phone I buried with a dead man, I just wouldn’t put my ear to his grave.

The film will be available to stream on Netflix on October 5, just in time for the Halloween spooky movie season to kick off. Personally, I look forward to watching it and desperately trying to distract myself with my own phone during the many shots in the trailer that really seem to end with a jump scare.