Messages Deleted

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.

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")

Screenwriter Larry Cohen has over the past few decades churned out a number of screenplays that are offbeat and entertaining. However, not even Cohen is always perfect, and "Messages Deleted", which he scripted, is a big disappointment. The movie goes wrong in a number of ways. The main protagonist is a big turn-off - he's annoying in ways that are not interesting, and it's hard to be on his side as his predicament gets worse. He's also stupid, doing things no person of reasonable sense would do that get him further in trouble. Though the police are also stupid as well, missing some obvious clues that would show them that the protagonist is innocent of the charges against him. The movie has passable production values for a low budget independent Canadian production, but you don't go to a movie just for that.

Good to see Lillard in a horror movie again, shame it's this one. By no means a terrible movie, it's not great either. It starts with enough promise that you keep watching, hoping it will keep it up.

Unfortunately, it doesn't. It gets sillier and sillier until the easily foreseeable ending. As the title says, it suffers from the 'spiraling into mediocrity' syndrome, something many movies today seem to have. A writer had an interesting opener and premise, but had NO idea how to conclude it on the same level.

I'd give it a 6, but only because i'm a fan of low budget thrillers/horror movies. If you're not into the genre, you'd probably be better off skipping this one...