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.
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.