La Mort au bout du fil

It was a really good movie until the last scene which for me destroyed my good opinion that I had! The way that movie was evolving it wasn't something special but I didn't get bored!

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.

Im sorry but this was terrible. Watched it because im on lockdown, but what could have been so good was terrible. Police characters were a joke. Ending awful. Obvious who killer was after 20 mins. Just a waste of time. Not 1 star because matthew lillard was ok

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.

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...