Hello Allen
I was having this problem with ios 10 and hoping that ios 10.0.1 would fix it. I have an iPhone 6
The updated message app is still malfunctioning: it freezes, is really slow and draggy and new messages received since the upgrade show as unread even after the 5 minutes it takes to open them. If I delete a message it reappears as unread. The message app is also draining my battery in a matter of hours.
In short the messages app is not working at all. I haven't even tried any of the fancy new functions, I just need the app to work.
I have tried restarting, hard reset, switching off the background refresh, switched on the reduce motion function and done a reset all setting (super irritating as I had to redo a whole host of my favourite settings including touch ID.
I'm now stuck and very irritated. There are lots of complaints about the problems with the battery drain of the message app, I wonder why apple is not doing anything to fix this essential (and undeletable) app? For the first time ever a Samsung seems like a good idea...