As with all my review-caps, MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD. You’ve been warned.
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It’s Halloween and I don’t know about you, but I’m in the mood for horror flicks. Actually, I’m always in the mood for horror flicks – but especially in October when the weather gets chilly, the leaves turn and it’s pumpkin everything, everywhere. So how disappointing is it that there aren’t more new scary movies being released this month? Well, it’s disappointing enough that Countdown is the only option in the theaters this week – but the good news is that it’s actually not that bad.
At the outset you have to accept the ridiculousness of the premise if you’re gonna take the ride – that being the existence of a smartphone app that tells the user how much time they have left to live. Yeah – goofy. Totally goofy. The very idea that ultra-powerful, supernaturally evil beings like demons would use an app (or social media in the case of similar flick Unfriended) to kill people is just – well, goofy. Even outright stupid. But I can deal with it for 90 minutes as long as the flick has what every flick needs to in order to work – and Countdown has the basics. Barely.
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So they waste no time in diving right in, taking us into a house party full of millennials and Gen Z’ers in various stages of getting wasted. A group sitting at the dining room table slog their way through some horribly banal dialogue in order to get to an inadvertent discovery of the “Countdown” app. Its only description – “if you could find out exactly when you’re going to die, would you want to know?” They decide to make a drinking game out of it, where everybody downloads it and whoever has the least amount of time has to drink everybody else’s drinks. The lucky winner is Courtney (Anne Winters), who, unlike her friends, gets a timer with just a couple of hours on it. Everybody else laughs it off, but of course, Courtney’s a little creeped out.
Later on, she’s in a car with her boyfriend, Evan (Dillon Lane), trying to convince him not to drive because he’s clearly drunk. She wants to walk home, but Evan insists on driving, prompting Courtney to get out of the car and start walking on her own. Evan tries to get her back in the car, but she won’t. So he drives off angrily, leaving Courtney to walk home alone on a dark street. She gets a little freaked when she realizes someone’s behind her – but it turns out to be a false alarm.
Relieved, Courtney gets home to an empty house (following the typical horror trope where the parents are conveniently never around), where she starts hearing creepy noises. And all the while, the Countdown timer keeps ticking down, blaring unnerving notification noises as it gets below 2 minutes. Courtney checks the shower (because you always have to check the shower) – there’s no one there, but then suddenly she’s grabbed by something hovering above. And as the timer clicks down to zero, Courtney’s body drops back down to the floor, lifeless.
So now it’s time to introduce our protagonist, nursing intern Quinn Harris (Elizabeth Lail). She’s great at her job, showing her kindness when she finds Evan hiding out in the hospital’s closed wing (because of course all hospitals have to have a creepy, closed-off wing). Turns out he ended up crashing his car after leaving Courtney – an accident in which she would have died had she been in the car. Quinn tries to comfort him, but Evan’s terrified. He tells her about the Countdown app and reveals that his time is up in a matter of hours. He’ll die during his scheduled surgery. Quinn tells him how ridiculous that is and convinces him to come back to his room. But once he’s there, the demon scares him out into the stairwell where he sees a ghoulish vision of Courtney that attacks and kills him just as the app predicted.
Meanwhile, Quinn’s supervisor, Nurse Amy (Tichina Arnold) fools Quinn into thinking she’s in trouble, just to lure her to a surprise party celebrating Quinn’s passing the RN exam. And in the course of conversation, just like the kids, everyone starts talking about the Countdown app. Following the crowd, Quinn downloads the app too – and after an awkward, slightly skeezy encounter with the attending doctor, Dr. Sullivan (Peter Facinelli) in the elevator, Quinn checks the app and is shocked to see that she has less than 3 days to live.
She tries to forget about it and goes home to fill out some work-related papers, Realizing that her birth certificate, Quinn reluctantly goes to her Dad’s house. We learn that Quinn’s mother died some time ago, leaving her Dad (Matt Letscher) and rebellious younger sister Jordan (the awesome Talitha Bateman, one of the best parts of Annabelle: Creation) behind. Quinn finds Jordan hiding in a closet with a half-naked boy (Alexander Dominguez). She kicks him out and scolds Jordan, who just throws it right back in her face. The family’s grief is clearly still raw, rendering them dysfunctional – something Quinn is trying to avoid by staying away – but she reluctantly agrees to go along when her Dad suggests they visit the gravesite that weekend.
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Quinn goes back to her apartment and does the obligatory internet search/info dump on the Countdown app, feeling torn as she watches numerous YouTube videos and reads all the comments, half of which are convinced of the app’s validity and the other half calling it total bullsh*t. She tries to delete the app and gets even more freaked out when she discovers that she can’t – and no amount of tutorial vids on deleting apps helps.
So the next day, when she decides to bail on her Dad and Jordan, the app suddenly sends a notification telling Quinn she’s “broken the user agreement.” Panicking, she goes to a store and buys a new phone – where the hilarious store owner, Derek (Tom Segura) can’t help but notice how squirrelly Quinn is. She’s relieved when she turns on the new phone and doesn’t see the Countdown app – but before she even gets out the door, the phone dings and alerts her – the Countdown app just loaded.
Quinn gets back in her car and sees a shadowy figure looming in her backup camera’s view (who reminded me a lot of Mr. Death in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life, but anyway), then she freaks as ghoulish hands grab her from the backseat. She accidentally backs into another guy’s car and he’s just about ready to unload some road rage on her when Matt (Jordan Calloway), another guy who was in the wireless store, comes to her aid. Turns out he’s in a similar situation, having downloaded the Countdown app and having only a couple of days left.
Later, little sister Jordan shows up at Quinn’s apartment, asking to stay with her while their father’s away on a job. She doesn’t want to be stuck with the musty old babysitter. Quinn refuses, and Jordan gets mad at her, yelling at her about how she’s avoided and abandoned her and their Dad since their Mom’s death. All the while, the Countdown timer keeps ticking away, gradually driving Quinn insane. Things go from bad to worse when pervy Dr. Sullivan tries aggressively putting the moves on her at work. Quinn fights him off and tries to report it to Nurse Amy, but Sullivan swoops in and pulls her away from Quinn before she can say anything. Later on, Quinn gets called into a meeting with the hospital supervisors – big surprise, the good Doc’s gotten ahead of her and reported her, making it seem like she went after him – and despite Quinn’s pleading, they suspend her.
And as the time ticks away on everybody, the mental torture increases – Jordan’s downloaded the app too, and gets freaked out by a shadowy figure that invades the house. Meanwhile, while waiting for Quinn at the hospital, Matt gets a scare in the men’s room by a vision of a young boy that walks through the walls and comes after him. Quinn and Matt decide to go to Derek, the wireless store owner, for help. Derek takes a look and tells them the how stupidly simple the app is, and that it’s easy enough to hack if you have the proper coding expertise. He goes through the program, just a long list of names and numbers. Quinn sees Jordan’s name on the list and freaks, but Derek then changes the numbers for all of them. Boom. Problem solved.
Relieved but still not feeling entirely secure, Quinn and Matt decide to stay together at her place – and they tell each other their sad stories, Quinn about her mother’s death and Matt about his younger brother’s. Matt makes a bed on the floor but Quinn says it’s okay for him to share the bed with her. Later on, she wakes up with Matt sleeping next to her, his arm around her – and she’s happy about it until she hears noises and sees light outside her door. Matt comes in and Quinn realizes that the arm around her isn’t his. She flips out and of course, the demon torturing her disappears.
Running out of options, Quinn decides to go to the hospital chaplain (Valente Rodriguez) for help – but he quickly admits to being out of his depth and refers her to his friend Father John (P.J. Byrne) – an unconventional priest to say the least, with a bunch of tattoos and a love of rap and Grubhub. But he’s the guy with the knowledge, and he brings out some moldy old book that shows them a goofy story about some miscellaneous prince from some miscellaneous place and time who made a deal with some random gypsy woman to find out when he was going to die. His death would have come in an upcoming battle, so the prince tried to thwart the prophecy by sending his brother into battle instead. But it didn’t work and they both died. Father John explains that the problem is that Quinn, Matt and Jordan have all cursed themselves by doing the same thing – avoiding the time and place of their impending deaths. So in app terms, they’ve “broken the user agreement.” But, the good Father says, if they can beat the clocks by even just one second, they can break the curse.
So cue the preparation montage as Quinn, Matt and Jordan make a giant circle on the floor in salt (and paint, because you know you don’t want the salt to just blow away, right?), which becomes a protected space once Father John blesses it. And they all get a good look at the ugly demon that’s haunting them as it prowls around the outside of the circle, unable to pass beyond it. But the demon’s crafty, and lures Matt out of the circle by pretending to be his younger brother. Quinn goes after him trying to save him, but Matt ends up running outside and getting hit by a car – taking his last breath exactly when the app said he would.
Fed up and scared for her little sister, our heroine comes up with a new plan. Quinn entrusts one of the other nurses with a terrified Jordan, as she then goes to pervy Dr. Sullivan and pretends to be all into him, suggesting that she’ll do whatever he wants as long as she gets her job back. Quinn lures the Doc into the creepy closed wing of the hospital (of course) and then attacks him, threatening to kill him with a syringe full of enough morphine to kill an elephant. But in the scuffle, she loses the syringe and the Doc escapes.
Meanwhile, Jordan’s time is running out – the demon scares her out of her room and into the closed wing as well (of course), closing in on her as her last minutes tick by. But then Quinn comes to her rescue – realizing how she can beat the clock. She injects herself with the morphine, and dies before her time, breaking the curse and saving Jordan, who’s devastated – until she notices that Quinn’s written something on her arm. She’s drawn a circle and written the word “Narcan.” Jordan discovers another syringe and the Narcan and injects Quinn – who, after the requisite time of will-she-or-won’t-she-wake-up, of course revives.
So the demon’s been outsmarted and all is well again. Quinn, Jordan and their Dad go and visit Mom’s grave, placing fresh flowers. Even better, according to the news, pervy Dr. Sullivan’s been busted after more nurses came forward and told their similar stories of sexual assault. Everything’s great until Quinn gets a notification on her phone – Countdown 2.0 has just loaded. Dun-dun-DUN! And – cut.
There’s really no sense in picking a flick like this apart point by point. It’s a pretty standard horror flick with a ridiculous premise and characters that never leave the confines of a flat, basic script. But what saves Countdown from being truly awful are the leads’ likability and the easygoing humor that runs throughout. It’s not quite a horror-comedy, but the lighter moments and snarky dialogue give you the impression that the flick doesn’t take itself too seriously – which is definitely the smart way to go. So while no one will ever put Countdown on their lists of the best films ever made, it’s a good bit of Halloween fun.
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Directed and Written by: Justin Dec
Release Date: Oct. 25 , 2019
Rating: PG-13
Run Time: 1 hr 30 min
Distributor: STX Entertainment
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