Mensajes del otro mundo

In DEADLY MESSAGES, Laura Daniels (Kathleen Beller) finds an old Ouija board in her closet, and is soon being stalked by a knife-wielding maniac. As the story develops, we realize that there's much more going on than just a simple slasher film.

This is an interesting made-for-TV movie. It's a definite thriller, but it also has heavy doses of supernatural / psychological horror. So, it could be viewed as either or both. There's a lot of mystery involved as well.

Ms. Beller has a genuine knack for this sort of tele-terror, making the best of her morphing role. Dennis Franz plays what amounts to a dry run for his -then future- role on NYPD BLUE. Kurtwood Smith has what amounts to a cameo role as the top cop on the case.

Formula movie and you can pretty much figure the plot and who is who from the beginning. However it is well acted and with out an excess of gore.

After forgetting her key and not being able to get her room mate to answer the door of a third story apartment, Laura Daniels is gutsy enough to use the fire escape. You guessed it she witnesses a murder. Naturally with out clues the police do not believe her. Things start to snow ball as Laura plays with a Quiji board, and figures out she is being stalked. The whole thing would be over in 15 minutes if anyone would believe her. And there are plenty of `Stay in the Car' type scenes. The only thing I guessed wrong was there were no scenes with jumpy cats. Hopefully it will one day come out on DVD.

On the outside, DEADLY MESSAGE appears to be one of those play-it-safe US TV movies of the 1980s, a mildly supernatural thriller about a woman who has the power to communicate with the dead thanks to a handy ouija board. However, this is only a minor sub-plot of the film, which turns out to be something else entirely: a unique combination of false identity drama, a chase thriller, a murder mystery, and a psychological mystery. It's unwieldy and not entirely successful, but the combination of elements means that it's a lot better than I'd expected.

There are huge flaws here, not least a cheat twist ending which means the viewer has no way of solving the mystery beforehand due to information being kept from them. On the other hand, the cast is solid, including heart throb Michael Brandon as the romantic interest and the tag-team of Kurtwood Smith and Dennis Franz as cops. Kathleen Beller is more sympathetic than most as the heroine, mixed up in one of those "is she mad?" style plot lines.

Amid the clichés, I was amused to notice that this film is heavily inspired by THE TERMINATOR, which was released to cinemas a year previously. An entire sub-plot involves the main character being stalked by a killer who wears sunglasses and a leather jacket and who appears to be unstoppable in sequences which bring to mind the Arnie flick. Hell, they even drafted in THE TERMINATOR's Brad Fiedel to do the soundtrack!

I watched this movie initially assuming it was just Lifetime fodder and it started seeming like such. However, the plot became more and more interesting later as the mystery unfolded. The writer of the movie has given an original and quite plausible explanation to what happens to the lead character. The only things that I didn't like were the inclusion of some stereotypes thrillers tend to fall into (e.g. disbelieving cops), and the final scene, which was unnecessary and threw off the flow. 9/10

I read only a couple of other comments about this film, so, I'll volunteer my two cents, as well. 'Cept I'm not gonna disagree with the other reviewers - I, too, thought that this was an above-average flick. Laura realizes that she is locked out of her apartment and peers through a window. Maybe her housemate (who she doesn't know very well) will see her and let her in. Instead, Laura witnesses a guy choking the roomie. In a panic, she gets the fire department to respond to an alarm at her flat. The cops are also dispatched. In spite of Laura's story, the police can't find a body, or any signs of a forced entry or struggle; so, to them, Laura looks like a kook. To make matters worse, it's learned that it's not the first time when the co-tenant has dropped out of sight. One of Laura's diversions is to play with a Ouija Board. From it she receives information about what she saw, her address, and eventually, herself. Throughout it all, she has difficulty convincing a detective - even her boyfriend - of what she suspects and her own identity. Finally, she is confronted with it actually being HER story. The movie starts out kinda slow, but causes one's interest to increase as it progresses. I hope that the unsympathetic portrayal of the police is exaggerated. I guess it was part of the attempt to show frustration at being disbelieved - like: sure you were abducted by aliens. This dummy also appreciated one of the final scenes, wherein the pieces of the puzzle were nicely summed up by those involved. Not a lot else to praise or badmouth here. Bottom line is: it's time and/or reasonable bucks adequately spent.