Photo courtesy of Countdown
What if an app could tell you exactly when you were going to die? Countdown is yet another take on man vs. technology. The movie begins when a group of college students find an app that supposedly tells you when you will die. After downloading the app, one of the students is surprised to find that she only has a couple of hours to live. Scared for her life, she avoids riding in the car with her obviously drunk boyfriend, who happens to wreck the car and end up at the hospital.
Meanwhile, a nurse at the hospital, Quinn Harris, downloads the app after the drunken boyfriend tells her about it. She finds that she only has days to live. She initially dismisses the threat, but after breaking the terms and conditions of the app, mysterious things begin to happen to her. She soon joins forces with Matt, a man who also downloaded the app, and her sister who downloaded it after Quinn’s frantic reaction. Now it is up to Quinn to save their lives before her time runs out.
Countdown revolves around unchanging fate. When people download the app they are able to see the moment they will die. However, the characters in this movie are unable to accept the truth of their demise. Despite this, the movie never really discusses the question of humans wanting to know the exact time they will die. While it does show how humans react once they learn when they will die, I would have liked for it to dive deeper into the human psyche and how the information affects the person’s decisions and attitude toward life.
The characters in the movie are not smart and very stereotypical. Though the movie is advertised as horror, it contains mostly jump scares and loud noises that are too obvious to really get under your skin. This movie borrows a lot from other movies such as Happy Death Day, Friend Request and Unfriended.
In my opinion, the movie was a cheesy, low-grade take on the dangers of the modern world (such as phones) aimed to scare teens and young adults while also having a laugh.
I would give Countdown 1.5/5 Maroos.