Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

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.

I ran across this film on netflix and the description pulled me in. This film would have received a 7/10 instead of a 6 if it had not been so busy pointing out the clichés that every horror film has, then doing that cliché themselves moments later. It tried so hard to make itself stand out from other horror films by bashing them for clichés that it winds up just like them. The acting was pretty good, but the story was pretty basic. I know a lot of people didn't like it, but to me the ending was nice. Sure I would have liked to know exactly what took place, but it gave me and the people I watched it with something to discuss after wards. If you have some time to kill go and watch this movie, but don't expect it to be a hidden horror gem. There are no jumping out of your seat moments and most of the time you can guess what will happen next, but still a very watchable movie.

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!

Alright, now, Larry Cohen's writing has always been hit-or-miss for me. I liked his "Maniac Cop" series, "It's Alive", "Phone Booth", and even "The Stuff" and "Uncle Sam", but for every enjoyable script he produces, there seems to be an equally awful follow-up, like "Captivity", or, well, this one.The huge problem with "Messages Deleted" is how extremely desperate it is to come off as hip. It's laden with postmodern, self-aware babble about movie staples, story structure, clichés and so on. The main character writes screenplays and teaches scriptwriting in college; a fact that he won't *ever* shut up about. There is a tiny bit of character depth attempted when we see a few scenes of him caring for his demented father and being confronted with some sort of vaguely haunting past, but that's all ditched soon enough in favor of an endless stream of "I KNOW A LOT ABOUT STORYTELLING IN MOVIES! HEAR ME MAKE REFERENCES TO IT AND APPLY MOVIE ANALYSIS TO REAL LIFE!". Excuse the all-caps, but I'm trying to convey just how utterly annoying it is to listen to this gimmicky dialogue all the time, when it's neither natural, nor particularly insightful.Regarding the storyline, all I can say is that for a movie that's so smugly obsessed with pointing the finger at "clichés" every chance it gets, it sure fails to steer clear of them itself. The whole thing is so bland, so mediocre, so utterly conventional that its self-aware pretense and attempted cleverer-than-thou attitude consistently fall flat. Even the core premise of a killer acting out a script is old and unimaginative. Not that it couldn't have been done well, but it's still a contributing factor to making this movie seem nowhere near as fresh as it wants to perceived.Now, after all this misery, there's certainly a bit of salvageable material here. With the exception of Millie and Adam, all the characters are brought to life by pretty skilled actors. Matthew Lillard does a decent job walking the line between "I'm playing a serious character!" and "I'm friggin' Matthew Lillard!", and I always enjoy seeing a bit of Serge Houde, although he's merely the token douchebag cop in this one. Cinematography and editing are also competent enough, in my opinion, to elevate this movie from sub-par to average, but that's really as far as I'm willing to go.In closing, "Messages Deleted" is a movie that's consistently stuck in an uncomfortable rut between making trite and often forced observations about the predictability of thriller movies, and conforming to those very conventions that make thriller movies predictable to begin with.