Killer app plot fails to tap into our dread
The one thing you can say about “Countdown” is that the title is entirely accurate. Almost from the moment it starts, you’re checking your watch, waiting for the closing credits to come up.
The film (not to be confused in any way with Robert Altman’s 1967 “mission to the moon” opus of the same name) takes its title from an instory app that predicts your exact time of death when downloaded, and then goes to work really hard to make sure it meets that deadline. Don’t try to delete it, and don’t try to change your fate. It’s like Waze with an attitude problem.
We’re given a firsthand window into the app’s evil workings at the outset when teens at a party drunkenly download it, with tragedy predictably ensuing. Ah, where would horror movies be without drunken teenagers unleashing forces man wasn’t meant to know?
Written and directed by Justin Dec, “Countdown” is populated by a cast of familiar faces from television, headed by
Elizabeth Lail (star of the Lifetime series “You”). She plays Quinn, a nurse who downloads the aforementioned app out of curiosity only to find she has less than two years remaining on this mortal coil. Even more inconvenient, the app follows her to a new device when she tries to get rid of her old phone, and no matter what she does it keeps buzzing with annoying push notifications letting her know the clock is still ticking.
“Countdown” could just as easily be called “Jump Scare: The Movie” for the many ways it wheels out that hoariest of scare tropes to keep the audience wound up. This is the kind of movie where suspension of disbelief is so battered that you’re actively picking apart the internal logic as you watch. While you can appreciate the filmmakers’ attempt to imbue some semblance of verisimilitude via a tortured biblical backstory, gamely exposited by a “hip” priest played by P.J. Byrne, it’s a lot of info to have to take in for what’s ultimately not a lot of payoff.
With all that said, it’s worth mentioning that Lail is an appealing lead with a lot of promise. She’s also given an arc that at least provides some degree of agency and largely avoids resorting to too many “final girl” cliches. Jordan Calloway (from the CW’s “Black Lightning”) also makes a strong mark as Matt, who crosses paths with Quinn after That Darn App told him his time is almost up as well. (It’s also great to see Peter Facinelli playing what is essentially the 20yearslater version of his entitled jock character from “Can’t Hardly Wait.”)
Between “Jexi” a few weeks ago and now this, October has ended up becoming a great month for bad movies about scary software. And one can certainly argue that these movies’ very existence says something larger about our society’s growing angst over the prevalence of smartphones in our lives as their presence proves ever more demonstrably detrimental. Unfortunately, neither project quite manages to tap into that collective angst in a meaningful, transcendent way, settling instead for cheap laughs and cheap scares.
And that, too, would be totally fine if what we’re left with wasn’t a dollarstore “Final Destination” riff. Indeed, there’s something faintly infuriating about the decision to insert a blatant sequel tease just before the credits roll, as if threatening the audience for having had the temerity to sit through the entirety of the thing. Given all that we’ve seen up to that point, it feels both unearned and mildly insulting. It’s hard to imagine anyone will be counting down for that.