This movie had an extremely interesting concept - unfortunately... after establishing the concept they fail to explore it at all. It is well made, acting is good, however the story feels empty and like it goes nowhere. When it finally felt like "okay this is where the real fun starts and where things will go off the rails..." the credits roll and it is over.

The expectation for Stephen King film is that this would turn into a horror film... or at the very least have some suspenseful moments and a climax that resolved the storyline.

However, we get a long build up and very little resolution it reward.

We don't see Mr. Harrigan "take care" of either of his victims. The viewer never feels the danger of anything. It is just a very lethargic film. Not bad, not good either. It just is... is it entertaining? In the sense that it keeps feeling like it is about to get entertaining... but never does

[Spoilers Ahead

A boy reads books to an old man, they become friends in a sense, the old man dies, the kid gets bullied and talks to the old man via his cellphone to vent (although the old man is dead),the bully dies. The kid graduates high school and goes away to college. The teacher that was kind to him in high school gets killed by a drunk driver. The drunk driver gets away with it. The boy talks to the old man on his cellphone. The drunk driver dies. The boy cries. Visits the old man's grave and had a heartfelt one way conversation. Throws the phone into a quarry lake. Credits.

You are just left going "why was this movie made? What was the point of making a full length movie out of a 5 minute concept?"

I was not familiar with the Stephen King book this movie is based on so I don't know if it's any good but this movie adaptation sure is. Craig (played adequately by Jaeden Martell) is a young boy who does readings in his small town church. One day Mr. Harrigan (played by the amazing Donald Sutherland-he gives an award worthy performance making the most of his short screen time) attends church and hears Craig reading. Soon after Mr. Harrigan asks Craig's dad if he can pay Craig to come to his mansion three times a week and read to him due to his failing eyesight. Thus starts an evolving 5 year relationship between the two. Craig's mother passed away when he was young and he has been emotionally unmoored ever since. He's quiet, smart and not one of the cool kids and thus a target for the school bully.

Craig learns a lot from Mr. Harrigan but also discovers that Mr. Harrigan was a ruthless business man. He makes Craig promise to "dispatch" with anyone who gets in his way. Craig makes that promise not really understanding what that really means or entails.

Craig gets an iPhone for Christmas from his Dad one year. Mr. Harrigan gives Craig one lottery ticket about 4 times a year. One day Craig gets a winning ticket. He uses some of the winnings to buy Mr. Harrigan a phone. MH wants nothing to do with it until Craig shows him he can check the stock market in real time. Pretty soon Mr. Harrigan is just as hooked as a teenager. One day he tells Craig that phones will be the downfall of man predicting all of the things that are an issue in today's society. Not too long after that, Craig goes to read to MH and finds that he has passed away. At the funeral, Craig decides to put MH's phone in his coffin at the last minute. Greg is so distraught after this, that he takes to calling MH on the phone knowing full well he can't get a response.

Craig gets beat up pretty bad one evening by the bully at a school dance. Craig is so upset that he calls MH and tells him everything that happened. The very next day Craig finds out that the bully is dead. Craig is convinced MH had something to do with it even though he's dead. More supernatural things happen throughout the movie.

I gave this a 9 because it was so engrossing and atmospheric. I couldn't turn it off once I started. The only reason I didn't give it a 10 is because by the end of it, I wasn't really sure whether this was supposed to be a commentary on phones, or a horror film, which was what I went into the movie thinking it was going to be.

Th ending was very abrupt and very unsatisfying. The locked closet was a big mystery, and yet at the end, it turned out to just be photos and mementos from MH's life-there was no big sinister secret or anything revealed. Also, it was clear Mr. Harrigan was not a pleasant person in business, but it seems he did have a family and his texts had to do with their names but we really don't know anything other about MH besides the fact that he was a ruthless business person. We find out that the groundskeeper that worked for him before he was fired killed himself, but was it truly due to something sinister from MH or did the guy just become depressed and finally give up? Also the death of the bully and the drunk driver were very specific which leads you to believe that there was a supernatural element to their deaths. However, you just see their death scene, but nothing further was explained

Not really sure the message of this film. It seemed to be one way, but then it ended like Stephen King was trying to give a "moral of the story" type of thing by intuiting "stay off your phone". I think I would've liked to have had a better ending especially why MH chose Craig. Craig speculates as to why but it wasn't definitive. We saw that MH operated only to serve himself so I kept expecting there to be an explanation as to why he chose Craig. I thought at some point the story of the ex-groundskeeper would somehow overlap with Craig's Mom's death showing that MH was trying to atone through Craig in some way but that didn't happen. Overall the film was very good and I really enjoyed it. Also I hope DS sees a dermatologist on the regular because he had a very large unsightly distracting skin cancer looking patch on his forehead that needs to be looked at STAT. Maybe it was for the movie to reinforce how old he is but if not someone get him to the doctor...anyone else notice that? Maybe it's just me. Anyhoo hopefully he is ok.

When I saw the trailer for this film, I was kind of excited since it's based on a story for Stephen King, and the premise was interesting, plus the two main lead actors (Donald Sutherland, Jaeden Martell) are definitely great.

As the story progress, I kept waiting for the cool parts to start happening, but sadly they hardly ever happened, and all we saw is a big indirect advertising campaign for iphone (not that Apple needs it),but seriously the whole movie is based on the iphone.

Another thing that got me confused is how the movie's genre says "horror" but it has no such thing, it's very misleading, it's more of a drama thriller.

I loved the parts when Craig was reading to Harrigan, and how their relationship got stronger, in spite of the vast difference between them.

I guess the main message the film is trying to convey is the effect of modern technology (in this case the smartphone) on our lives, and how it completely disengage us from the real world, and end up controlling us and feeding us lies. And also to be careful what we wish for.

"When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers". Oscar Wilde.