COUNTDOWN. A Horror Film with an Absurd Premise

“Curiosity killed the cat” – so says the famous proverb and the tagline of the horror film Countdown, but it’s hard to blame the characters for launching an app that can predict, down to the second, when they will die. In Justin Dec’s directorial debut, practically all the characters install the devilish app on their phones – not out of sin, but as a sign of the times. No one wants to be left behind, especially when it comes to the latest tech innovations. One app calculates your calorie intake, another tells you the date of your death – and the results from both are meant to help us become better versions of ourselves. Of course, we first have to survive the titular countdown – something the filmmakers present as nearly impossible right from the opening scenes.

In the prologue, a young partygoer learns she will die that very night – and sure enough, it happens. Just seconds before the predicted time of death, a mysterious force lifts her to the ceiling and kills her. But we know that earlier she chose not to ride in a car with her drunk boyfriend – leading to her dying not in the car, but at home. Would she have lived had she stayed in the car? Not at all. Moments later, we see the boyfriend crash, and the passenger seat is impaled by a tree branch. Dec, who also wrote the script, seems to be telling us that the app is infallible – and that someone (or rather something) ensures the predicted death date is kept. It’s reminiscent of Final Destination, where death hunts down those who escape it – but Countdown prefers sudden demonic appearances and loud sound stings to flashy death sequences. The main plot centers on a young nurse named Quinn (Elizabeth Lail), who tries to uncover the mystery of the deadly app – especially since it’s given her only two days to live. The Ring-like formula gives the director a chance to roll out a series of worn-out, occasionally effective jump scares, along with some interesting observations about today’s world.

What do we learn? That the finger is quicker than the eye, and it’s easier to click “Accept” than read the terms and conditions. This doesn’t have to mean we’re gullible or lazy – just conditioned, especially when everyone around us is doing the same. The threat of deception seems illusory then – but the Countdown app doesn’t want to lie to us. In that sense, it’s a commercially perfect invention: easy to use, effective, alluring in its function, and impossible to return. What I do miss in Dec’s film is a sense of scale – the global spread of the app, the mass psychosis its infallibility would surely cause. But the director isn’t aiming to fill the viewer with dread. Instead, the screen is populated with often exaggerated characters – like a priest who joined the church to confront the unknown, or a sardonic cellphone salesman. Dec handles the tone fairly well, adding these humorous episodes to his horror film. However, he makes a serious misstep by introducing a sexual assault subplot to help the heroine deal with the cursed app.

In the #MeToo era, this feels less tone-deaf than it does outright distasteful – though even here, the film’s ideological elements seem to interest Dec more than the plot. Quinn, a devoted nurse and textbook altruist, twice decides that it’s worth sacrificing others: once when a man is revealed to be harassing coworkers, and again when another claims the Holocaust didn’t happen (this latter moment plays clearly for laughs). By giving her moral license, Dec steps beyond the standard haunted-object horror movie and ventures into morally ambiguous territory.

And that wouldn’t be a problem – if the fantastical death app and the realistically portrayed sexual predator didn’t feel like two entirely different monsters from entirely different worlds. Or maybe not? Zeitgeist-driven ambitions give the director strength, but in the final stretch, this turns into something clumsy, even cynical. I quickly accepted the film’s absurd premise, which made most of the screening surprisingly enjoyable. As a debut, Dec shows he knows how to tell a story with interest, pacing, and an awareness of his material.

He also clearly likes his characters – a rarity in horror – and it’s refreshing to see likeable people rather than the usual throwaway victims. That said, he’s not very good at scaring. One standout scene involves the main character’s sister wandering the house at night – it builds tension expertly and delays the inevitable jump with skill. A few smaller scares also land well, though the ending spoils an otherwise decent first film. Dec’s zeitgeist ambitions are admirable, but in the end, his approach feels poorly thought out – even cynical.

A shame. P.S. The biggest sin of Countdown, in my opinion? With a premise and title like this, how could they not include “The Final Countdown” by Europe? That’s a gimme.