Countdown (2019)

Directed by: Justin Dec | 90 minutes | horror, thriller | Actors: Elizabeth Lail, Jordan Calloway, Talitha Eliana Bateman, Peter Facinelli, Dillon Lane, Tichina Arnold, Tom Segura, Lana McKissack, Anne Winters, Matt Letscher, PJ Byrne, Valente Rodriguez, Louisa Abernathy, Charlie McDermott, Jonny Berryman, Cornell Adams John Bishop, Allen Zwolle, Chuck Filipov, Jeannie Elise Mai, Ramsay Philips, Britt Rentschler

Some horror movies are gross, exciting, or downright bad. ‘Countdown’ does what is the worst fate of a slasher. The makers of this film have succeeded in making a downright boring horror film. In a genre that derives its raison d’être from tapping into human fears, that can almost be called criminal! ‘Countdown’ is a movie where you literally count down the seconds and hope that this saltless exercise ends soon. However, that doesn’t happen. An hour and a half can feel like an eternity.

In ‘Countdown’ it is all about the app of the same name. If you download this application and agree to the terms of use – which no one reads, of course – you will find out when your date of death is. Countless young people put this gadget on their smartphone. Nurse Quinn (Elizabeth Lail) gets carried away by this hype and discovers she doesn’t have very long to live. Her little sister’s days are also numbered. What now? Together with another app user, the nurse goes looking for help to get rid of this miserable app. The church comes in handy, because it is believed that there is a demon behind this murderous application.

The idea behind ‘Countdown’ is cool. Our seemingly ever-increasing dependence on social media, apps, and computers is a good foundation for a fun movie. Whether or not socially critical. Debut director Justin Dec fails to make his film exciting or captivating for even a second. ‘Countdown’ happens. It is moving wallpaper, a sequence of scenes that have little coherence. Characters disappear as abruptly as they appear (a priest and a road user who, after a collision and a cowardly threat with no damage report, goes down the road). Dec has canned a rather fragmentary film that trades logic for lame jokes and a (literally) faceless villain.

Dec fails to maintain the interest and that has to do with the underdeveloped characters. The downright boring Quinn is not interesting to follow and that applies to all characters. Only the wonderfully glamorous PJ Byrne as a comic minded pastor is worth mentioning. The death scenes are very tame and flat. What remains is a poorly acted horror film full of cardboard characters, uninteresting murders and a downright confused story. Chances are you’ll install a countdown widget during the movie to watch this mind-numbing movie swallow your precious time and never give it back. Rather install a good app that warns you about these kinds of fake horror movies.