Simply Perfect

How sad is this?

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

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.

Here we have a movie written by Larry Cohen, a man obsessed with phones. This movie is a true B list movie. It is a cliché thriller which likes to point out and almost humiliate itself for being a cliché thriller. Matthew Lillads acting in the movie was very well done in comparison with how the movie represented itself. The movie showed no signs of severe bad directed,writing, or acting but also did not show signs of it being phenomenal either which is why I gave it a 5/10. The events that confused the "Protagonist" and twisted the view of who was the killer was quite creative and I give props to Larry on that. Other than that you will get your usual thrilleresque type storyline with a suspenseful feeling of "who did it"I would recommend this movie if you are a thriller fanatic or you need a nice background to waste some time.

Joel Brandt (Matthew Lillard) is an efficient screen writing professor in the university but has never succeeded as a screenwriter. When Brandt receives a weird phone call asking for help, he believes that it is a prank of his best friend Adam Brickles (Michael Eklund) and he deletes the message. When he is having a conversation with his girlfriend Claire (Chiara Zanni) on the sidewalk of a bar, the body of the caller falls off a building in front of them on the sidewalk. Brandt tells to the Detective Lavery (Deborah Kara Unger) and Detective Breedlove (Serge Houde) that are in charge of the investigation about the call that he had received and he becomes a suspect.When he receives another mysterious call from a woman also calling for help in his answering machine, he goes to the location and finds that she is dead. Brandt becomes the prime-suspect of Detectives Lavery and Breedlove when they find that the message was deleted from his answering machine. When Brandt discovers that the killer is following the only screenplay that he had sold to the cinema industry, "Senseless Killing", he tries to guess the next move of the serial-killer."Messages Deleted" is a senseless, annoying and absurd thriller about a screenwriter that is informed about murders that are following a screenplay that he had written stolen the idea from another screenplay.Joel Brandt is irritating, hysterical, clumsy and imbecile, and takes all the possible wrong attitudes along the story. The plot is based on deleted messages in times when it is possible to have traceability of phone calls, technical means to retrieve a deleted message and surveillance (bugging) a phone number. The stupid open conclusion is never clear but the worst is the use of the word "cliché" along the story. The writer had the intention of making a cult-movie but unfortunately he has totally failed. My vote is one (awful).Title (Brazil): "Mensagens Deletadas" ("Deleted Messages")

I had very low expectations going into this movie. It has absolutely no marketing or buzz factor (hence I am the first to review it on IMDb) and Matthew Lillard seems to be beyond his prime. Although the plot seemed very original and intriguing. After watching the film, I must admit I am hungry for more. The ideas are unique and the the story is beyond catchy. Without giving away spoilers, the story reminded me of looking at a photograph within a photograph. At first glance it seems too abstract to be realistic but once you uncover the idea behind it you are left memorized. Lillard gave a stunning performance beyond what I thought he was capable of. It's not just a slasher horror, yet an intense mystery thriller that could have twisted in any way, shape or form towards the end. After everything unraveled I found myself wanting to watch it again to full grasp the plot in a new light. Here we have a prime example of true film screen magic where it does not take a hundred plus million dollar budget or an A-list actor/actress in order to entertain. I give this movie a strong recommendation for anyone who appreciates it's respected genre and the art of film in general.