There’s a special kind of horror that comes not from masked killers, not from the occult, and not from the crackle of a Ouija board sliding across the alphabet. No—the true terror comes from being trapped on your couch watching a 1985 made-for-TV thriller stretch ninety minutes into an eternity, armed with nothing but Kathleen Beller’s perm and Dennis Franz’s mustache to keep you company. Welcome to Deadly Messages, a film that promised supernatural chills and psychological intrigue but instead delivered a master class in padded scripts, confused plotting, and the kind of editing that makes you check your own pulse just to make sure you’re still alive.
Ouija Boards: The Walmart Gateway to Hell
The movie begins with Cindy—played by Sherri Stoner, whose job is apparently “roommate who dies first”—fiddling with a Ouija board like it’s a Fisher-Price toy. She contacts a dead guy named David who was murdered in the very apartment she’s squatting in. This is spooky in theory, but on screen it plays like two bored sorority girls trying to decide if they want pizza or weed.
Then, in one of the film’s few attempts at actual horror, Laura (Kathleen Beller) comes home and sees Cindy being strangled to death. Great! Murder! Drama! Suspense! Except, when the cops arrive, the body is gone, the room is spotless, and the police decide Laura is just a hysterical woman with too much eyeliner. This sets the tone for the next hour: Laura screaming, no evidence, and the police sighing louder than the audience.
Kathleen Beller: Gaslight Victim of the Year
Let’s talk about Laura Daniels, our protagonist, or at least the woman the script insists is one. She’s supposed to be a successful professional, working at a dating consulting firm, which sounds like a front for psychic hotlines. The moment Cindy vanishes, Laura’s life collapses faster than a Jenga tower during an earthquake.
She gets fired, her résumé is exposed as fraudulent, she’s accused of mental illness, and her boyfriend Michael (Michael Brandon) decides to support her by yelling “You’re crazy!” in increasingly creative ways. Every scene is basically Kathleen Beller looking doe-eyed while the men around her roll their eyes and mutter something about schizophrenia. It’s less thriller and more group therapy session sponsored by Valium.
To Beller’s credit, she tries. She really does. But she’s given dialogue like, “I know it sounds crazy, but the Ouija board told me I’m next!” and there’s only so much an actress can do before she just lets her hair carry the performance.
Dennis Franz and the Police Department of Uselessness
And then there’s Dennis Franz, pre-NYPD Blue, showing up as Detective Max Lucas. His role here is to embody the spirit of every cop in a bad TV thriller: skeptical, sweaty, and one glazed donut away from retirement. Franz wanders through scenes like he accidentally walked off the set of Hill Street Blues and decided to stay because they were serving free coffee.
The police in Deadly Messages are less effective than mall security. At one point Laura literally finds a corpse stuffed in a car trunk, and the cops shrug like, “Eh, must’ve been the wind.” You could set a nuclear bomb off in Laura’s apartment and these guys would blame faulty wiring.
The Mystery That Solves Itself by Tripping Over Its Own Feet
As the movie plods forward, we get an increasingly convoluted backstory about Laura not being Laura at all, but actually Jennifer, a mental patient who escaped a hospital after surviving her brother’s murder attempt. So the Ouija board wasn’t summoning the dead—it was summoning repressed family trauma and lazy screenwriting.
This twist should’ve been shocking, but by the time it arrives, you’re too numb to care. You just mutter, “Fine, sure, she’s Jennifer, whatever gets us to the credits.” The climax reveals the killer as Laura/Jennifer’s brother Mark, who’s somehow survived for years as the world’s angriest axe enthusiast. The final confrontation ends not with horror but with Michael shooting Mark, which is less thrilling than watching your neighbor water their lawn.
Made-for-TV Production Values: Horror on a Budget
Being a made-for-TV movie, Deadly Messages looks cheaper than a public access cooking show. The sets are lifeless, the lighting is flatter than Iowa, and the score sounds like someone left a Casio keyboard running in the background.
Every attempted scare is undercut by the fact that you’re watching what might as well be a Murder, She Wrote rerun with extra shadows. Even the Ouija board—the supposed central prop of terror—looks like it was purchased at a garage sale next to a box of Chutes and Ladders.
And let’s not forget the “action scenes,” which consist of Laura running down hallways in slow motion while the soundtrack wheezes in protest. The pool attack? Looks like synchronized drowning practice. The axe fight? More like a clumsy Home Depot tutorial.
The Horror of Time Itself
Here’s the biggest problem: Deadly Messages is boring. Not just “bad movie” boring, but “time slows down until you begin questioning your life choices” boring. The film manages to make Ouija boards, murder, and identity theft feel like a dull paperwork audit.
Scenes drag on forever with endless talking about whether Laura is crazy. By the time the finale arrives, you’re rooting for the killer just so somebody will finally shut her up.
The Only Scary Thing: It Spawned a Cult Following
Somehow, Deadly Messages has a tiny cult following, mostly among people who collect ‘80s TV movies the way other people collect stamps. These are the same folks who think Dennis Franz holding a coffee cup automatically makes a film noir masterpiece. God bless them, but I suspect most of them haven’t actually rewatched the thing—they just remember the Ouija board and assume it was spooky.
In reality, it’s less spooky and more like being trapped at a dinner party where your host keeps insisting the ghost of her dead cat is speaking through the salt shaker.
Final Thoughts: The Real Message is “Don’t Watch This”
Deadly Messages is proof that not every movie deserves a resurrection on DVD or streaming. Some films should stay buried in the VHS bargain bin where they belong, right next to exercise tapes and infomercial bloopers.
What should’ve been a fun little horror mystery turned into a dull mess of bad acting, worse writing, and enough filler to qualify as a USDA-approved meatloaf. Kathleen Beller deserved better. Dennis Franz deserved a different mustache. And we, the audience, deserve financial compensation for the ninety minutes we’ll never get back.
So what’s the takeaway? If you ever find yourself tempted to watch Deadly Messages, grab a Ouija board instead. At least then you’ll be talking to the dead—and they’ll probably be more entertaining than this movie.
