Countdown
- Colton Gomez
- Mar 24, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Dec 28, 2024
Review
By Colton Gomez | 03/24/24 | 10:46 P.M. Mountain Time
Horror, Mystery| Rated PG-13 | 1 hr 30 min | "Countdown" Release Date: October 25, 2019
If you had an app that tells you when you die, would you download it or would you use caffeine and stress to blindly speed up the process like the rest of us? The natural human condition is to avoid death but doing so in "Countdown" gets you stalked by a demon and traumatized before you die. If I knew the exact time of my death, I think I would be relieved either way. If I had a long time before my death, I would carry on as normal and plan for a stronger future. If I had a short amount of time before my death, I would of course be filled with anxiety, but a lot of worry of the future would fade and I would focus on making my experience the fullest it can be, which excludes watching this movie.
Our main character, nurse Quinn (Elizabeth Lail), discovers she’s due to die in a couple of days and tries everything to get other people to save her. The malicious app that displays only a countdown to the user’s death in years, months, days, hours, and seconds is a 21st century endeavor of a demon that gets to torment people if they learn their death date and try to prevent it.
The demon at the center of the film fulfills a person’s death even if they try to prevent it. It can yank people several feet into the air without being seen or pull them across the room while remaining undetected (except for a tacky screech). If it can do these amazing supernatural, electromagnetic feats, surely it can give its own app more than 3.6/5 stars on the play store. How did the app get created in the first place? Did the demon code the app?
The premise is semi-interesting but that’s where the interest ends. There’s nothing interesting about Quinn: tragic family backstory now separates her from her remaining family members because she feels guilty and hates losing people she loves—you’ve seen it all before and done better elsewhere. What follows is a snooze-fest backstory trade between Quinn and Matt (Jordan Calloway), a guy who Quinn falls in love with because they share the same aversion to death, along with a biblical explanation for the app, unscary scare attempts, one-dimensional characters and equivalent acting.
There is one scene, above all, that makes the least sense. About halfway through the movie, Quinn goes to the hospital on her day off to ask the hospital priest a question. As she’s leaving, a nurse spots her and asks her into a room where the hospital administrator, a representative of the board of directors, and the doctor who sexually harassed her are all waiting. The purpose of this hearing or faux court is to tell Quinn that she’s suspended immediately because the hospital heard the doctor’s version of the harassment and just decided it was true. Quinn wasn’t interviewed or questioned, nobody checked the cameras, heard her scream, or even bothered to check out any further details as to the legitimacy of the doctor’s claim.
The reason this scene makes me so mad is because Quinn wasn’t even supposed to be at the hospital in the first place. Now, suddenly there is a scheduled meeting all about her and for her that she was not informed of. This scene is so obviously one-sided against Quinn and the fact that the film tries to pass it off as a legitimate scene and plot point is deeply insulting. It is a pathetic attempt to get us to hate the doctor and be mad for Quinn. It is so poorly done. I understand that there are one-sided meetings all over the place in favor of men in power over female subordinates, but this film does not try with this scene. There is no nuance, no subtext, nothing else going on in the scene. It is saying only one thing: be mad at the doctor for Quinn.
This film wants to be topical and right, sensitive and demanding, funny and scary. It tries to be too many things for too many people. Inevitably, in doing so, it becomes a film for no one. There is no depth to any of these topics. The payoffs are poorly done and not worth the investment. It spends so much time running in place that it goes nowhere. I want to see Lail succeed but with a script like this, it’s like asking a penguin to fly.
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Review by Colton Gomez
Colton Gomez earned his BA in Film Studies from Weber State University. He owns and operates ColtonGomez.com. Here, he covers new releases in theaters and on streaming. For short versions of his reviews, check out his LetterBoxd
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