{"id":8927,"date":"2024-11-27T12:46:02","date_gmt":"2024-11-27T17:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=8927"},"modified":"2024-11-27T12:46:17","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T17:46:17","slug":"countdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/11\/27\/countdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Countdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Countdown <\/strong>(2019)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 STX\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 90 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (terror, violence, bloody images, suggestive material, language, thematic elements)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Justin Dec\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Justin Dec\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Maxime Alexandre\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 25, 2019 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Elizabeth Lail, Jordan Calloway, Talitha Bateman, Peter Facinelli, Dillon Lane, Tichina Arnold, Tom Segura, Lana McKissack, Anne Winters, Matt Letscher, P.J. Byrne, Valente Rodriguez, Louisa Abernathy, Charlie McDermott, Jonny Berryman.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $25.6M (US)\/$48M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *<\/p>\n

\u00a0The characters in Countdown<\/strong> keep checking their phones to see how long they have to live. In similar fashion, I kept checking my phone to see how much more of this terrible teen horror movie I had to endure. I can honestly say this is one time the clock on my phone\u2019s home screen was more interesting than what was happening on-screen at any given moment. In its entire 90-minute running time, Countdown<\/strong> fails to conjure up a single scare or tiny thrill. It\u2019s another lame PG-13 fright flick aimed at teens too young to know better than to waste their allowances on low-grade dreck like this. Chances are most of them have never seen a real horror movie which Countdown <\/strong>most assuredly is NOT.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Let\u2019s call Countdown<\/strong> what it is; a blatant, idiotic, toned-down rip-off of Final Destination that doesn\u2019t even have the decency to allow its characters to die interesting deaths. One of the main selling points of the Final Destination series is that each character\u2019s demise was an elaborate, Rube Goldberg-esque scenario that usually involved a fair amount of bloodletting. The few deaths in Countdown<\/strong> are boring and mostly blood-free which I suppose makes sense since the characters are equally uninteresting. Movies like this are generally dumb, but Countdown<\/strong> takes it a step further by initially implying it\u2019s going to make a statement about how technology has completely dominated every aspect of our lives only to drop it in favor of the same tired horror tropes we\u2019ve seen a thousand times before.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the opening scene, a group of drunken college students at a party play a drinking game that involves an app one of them stumbled across. It\u2019s called Countdown and supposedly predicts when the user is supposed to die. Of course, ALL of them sign up, blindly agreeing to the terms of service. One of them, Courtney (Winters, 13 Reasons Why), learns she has less than three hours to live. She\u2019s so freaked, she walks home alone rather than let her drunken boyfriend Evan (Lane, Boogeyman Pop) drive her. She receives a notification on her phone that she\u2019s broken the \u201cuser agreement\u201d. She makes it home, but is killed by an unseen entity in her bathroom. Meanwhile, Evan crashes his car and a tree branch goes through the windshield right where Courtney would have been sitting. Really? Come on, even a drunk person can see that coming a mile off.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The main action of Countdown<\/strong> centers on Quinn (Lail, Dead of Summer), a nurse at the hospital where Evan is admitted for surgery after the crash. He\u2019s worried because the app says he has less than a day to live. Quinn tries to comfort him, but to no avail. For reasons that defy all logic, she downloads the app on her phone only to discover she has three days to live. Initially dismissive, her attitude changes when Evan is killed in the stairwell by the same entity while trying to bail. Another violator of the user agreement bites the dust. No matter what she tries, a now-scared Quinn cannot delete the app from her phone. When she buys a new phone, Countdown downloads itself. It looks like Quinn is screwed unless she finds a way to beat Death.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It goes without saying that Quinn\u2019s personal life is a mess. She and her younger sister Jordan (Bateman, Annabelle: Creation) are estranged following the death of their mother. Given this fact, it\u2019s a safe bet that Jordan will go against her sister\u2019s advice and download Countdown. Sure enough, she\u2019s supposed to die just a few minutes before Quinn. With the help of Matt (Calloway, Black Lightning), a guy she meets at the phone store, they race to find a way to escape the clutches of the Grim Reaper before the clock runs out. They go to a young priest (Byrne, Big Little Lies) who figures out an ancient demon is behind it all.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Everything I\u2019ve told you thus far about Countdown<\/strong> is stupid and nonsensical. That\u2019s bad enough on its own. It\u2019s made worse by an offensive #MeToo subplot involving Quinn being sexually harassed by a handsome doctor (Facinelli, the Twilight series) who turns around and accuses her of being the aggressor when she rebuffs his advances (in front of a comatose patient, no less). First, it\u2019s unnecessary; it doesn\u2019t add anything to the plot. Without a legitimate reason for being included, it comes off as crass and exploitative. Second, it\u2019s handled poorly. At a meeting with hospital directors, Quinn is suspended without being given an opportunity to speak in her own defense. Horror movies, by definition, are not realistic. HOWEVER, if you\u2019re going to address a topic as serious as workplace sexual harassment, do it in a realistic manner. There\u2019s no way such a meeting would go down as it does here. That is grounds for a massive lawsuit on the part of the falsely accused.<\/p>\n

\u00a0If not for the aforementioned subplot, I could almost believe that Countdown<\/strong> is a big joke. I say almost because it generates as many laughs as it does scares and that number is a big fat zero. It\u2019s a tremendous bore and an abject failure on every level. The characters, in addition to being uninteresting and poorly developed, are exceptionally stupid. They put themselves in so many deadly situations while trying to escape Death that you start to think their deaths would be mercy killings as they\u2019re too dumb to live. The acting is atrocious. The only mildly interesting thing about any cast member is how closely Lail resembles Jennifer Lawrence which is amusing since J. Law wouldn\u2019t be caught dead (if you\u2019ll pardon the phrasing) in a movie this bad. The storyline is thoroughly predictable especially if you know how to read movies. Note how writer-director Justin Dec, making his feature film debut, takes the time early on to show a couple of things that will surely play big parts in the climax. He all but telegraphs the ending which is a foregone conclusion to begin with anyway.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Countdown<\/strong> is a textbook hack job. It\u2019s dull, lazy and completely moronic. It doesn\u2019t have a single brain cell to its name. If anything, it kills brain cells. It\u2019s a colossal waste of time, resources and space that ends with the threat of a sequel. If this movie makes money, I dread the day I have to sit through Countdown 2.0. Is there an app that\u2019ll give me back the 90 minutes of my life I wasted on this insufferable piece of stupidity?\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Countdown (2019)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 STX\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 90 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (terror, violence, bloody images, suggestive material, language, thematic elements)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Justin Dec\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Justin Dec\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Maxime Alexandre\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 25, 2019 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Elizabeth Lail, Jordan Calloway, Talitha Bateman, Peter Facinelli, Dillon Lane, Tichina Arnold, Tom Segura, Lana McKissack, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9250,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Countdown-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8927"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9252,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8927\/revisions\/9252"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}