Messages Deleted (2010)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Absolutely Fantastic

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

I thought that MESSAGES DELETED was a very poor thriller. It's a Canadian film that looks and feels like a television movie, so stilted is the dialogue and watered-down are the thrills. The director, Rob Cowan, only ever shot this one film and for the rest of his career has worked as a producer, so I guess this was a case of him dipping his toes into the water and finding it too cold.I've always liked Matthew Lillard as an actor - I remember him back in SERIAL MOM - but he can do little with his underwritten character here. Deborah Kara Unger (THE GAME) is on hand as a cop investigating a rather preposterous case, but she's a bore as well; this is a film where it feels like everybody left their talent at the door before the shoot.It's doubly disappointing as the script was written by Larry Cohen, who once had a fine career as a director of quirky, low budget horror pictures like IT'S ALIVE. More recently Cohen has enjoyed some success with his scripts for PHONE BOOTH (which was great) and CELLULAR (which wasn't), but MESSAGES DELETED is bottom of the barrel stuff for him.

This movie was great! Mathew Lillard has really been a hit & miss with me in the past, but he was great in this thing! The story tells the story of Joel Brandt ( Mathew Lillard ), a failing screenwriter who is ironical a screen writing professor at a local college. One day after a long day of work he goes home to check his messages. He gets scared after receiving a call from Jeremy Potter, a man he's never met, is begging for his help. Thinking it is his buddy Adam ( Michael Ekland ) he calls him up and he says he didn't call him, he takes it as a crank phone call. But events leading up after the call prove it may have not've been a crank call. Easily the movie is 8/10 it wasn't amazing but a great watch for the group!

A movie that starts off with a mockery of clichés and then goes on to show that it contains each one of them. There is blood, there is a workaholic cop, a struggling professional in a dysfunctional relationship who realizes he cares for his girl in the moment of crisis, the prodigal protégé' and a "twist" that could be spotted from the moon. I had narrowed down on the eventual villain 20 mins into the movie, and so will you. Performances are forgettable, a very lame and unconvincing attempt by the actors to show sexual tension between their respective characters, and its as if death, even of your loved ones, can be forgotten in a matter of minutes. I am not even writing this review properly, coz seriously, even trashing this movie seems like a waste of time. You wanna stay away from this one, trust me.

If the movie was released sometime between the moment everyone have a cellphone in the 90's and the beginning of police forensics like in the "CSI" TV Series, I would have certainly enjoy this movie.Movie started good, until the first murder. Detectives are there, but there's no forensics work at all to find out clues about the suspects, no fingerprints verification, no phone records verification, just suspicions and coincidence that Joel appeared on the 2nd crime scene, and listening to the message on Claire's answering machine: "That's our guy! Release the suspect!"I mean, c'mon, he's a professor at University, he should know better about all the common errors which leads to getting caught, but he just do everything for evidence to lead to him, despite above mentioned sloppy detective work.Also, after the 2nd murder, why didn't he activate the function to forward all his calls to his cellphone? When a stranger is in a hurry to go to the airport but reluctantly give you a half-way lift for 100$, WHY would you trust that person to wait for you, regardless how much you give him?Something that ticked me off, back at Millie's place, it is mentioned the original script was reflecting reality, and page 76, it is what's happening now. But Joel wasn't a bit curious to read further in order to figure out what's gonna happen next and find ways to avoid everything bad in the script.Avoid this movie, unless you're bored and have nothing else to watch but a light crime movie like this one. I originally give it a 1 out of 10, but I'll give a 2 instead for Gina Holden and Chiara Zanni.