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Countdown (2019)
Universal Studios Home Entertainment
Blu-ray Disc Released: 1/21/2020
All Ratings out of
Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras: No Extras
Review by Mike Long, Posted on 2/3/2020
Modern life can be very scary. This
statement is true today and it’s been true…well, forever.
Due to the fact that astute humans always have a sense of anxiety, those
who make scary movies often capitalize on these modern horrors.
Whether it be the fear of nuclear war in the 1950s or the existential
dread brought on by the Vietnam War in the 1970s or the body horrors inspired by
new diseases in the 1980s, scary movies often reflect societies fears either
symbolically or overtly. Given how
most people can live without their cell phones, it’s not surprising that
filmmakers have brought these ubiquitous devices into their repertoire.
Films like
One Missed Call
and
App
have focused on this, and now we have the new entry Countdown.
Will it make you want to put down your phone and pay attention?
Quinn Harris (Elizabeth Lail) is a nursing student who is about to become a
full-fledged RN. One day, she’s
working with an anxious teen named Evan (Dillon Lane), who claims that an app
had predicted that his girlfriend was going to die and that according to the
timeline given on the app, he wasn’t going to survive his surgery.
Quinn looks into the app and is soon confronted with her own impending
death date. She wants to believe
that it’s all a hoax, but when evidence points to the contrary, she begins to
investigate further. She soon meets
Matt (Jordan Calloway) who is facing his own deadline.
They join forces with a maverick priest, Father John (P.J. Byrne), to try
and find a way to stop the Grim Reaper from coming.
Countdown
is the feature-film debut of Writer/Director Justin Dec, who was made some
shorts in the past and worked as a Production Assistant on many projects.
It’s obvious that he paid attention during this time, as the movie has a
nice look and good camera-work. The
90-minute running-time is exactly what a horror movie should have and the pacing
works well. The casting director
has done a fine job of mixing young actors with veterans like Peter Facinelli
and Tichina Arnold. And it’s
interesting to see Lail, star of the Netflix hit One, in another role.
Those things aside, Countdown is a failure due to problems with the
story. First of all, the overall
plot and the film’s entire vibe is a rip-off of the Final Destination
series. As we watch these
characters attempt to escape death and change their fates, one can’t help but
think about those movies. The
problem is that even the worst Final Destination entry was at least
interesting due to the Rube Goldberg-like death scenes.
We don’t get anything like that here.
Worse, the rules in Countdown don’t make any sense.
The individuals download the app and it tells them how long they have to
live. And, if they do something to
avoid an obviously unsafe situation, they are told that they’ve voided the app’s
user agreement and are thus in peril.
So, let me get this straight, they are going to die and if they change
that, they die anyway? Therefore,
welcome to a film which feels useless and dispense with any suspense given that
the characters are literally damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
There’s also the fact that the
explanation for the app’s existence and purpose don’t really pass muster.
Given that more and more companies are pushing apps (often encouraging consumers
to utilize the app over a website for some reason), it makes sense that we would
get another horror movie which demonizes these ubiquitous items.
A “killer app” may seemed clichéd at this point, but, in the right hands,
that could yield an interesting movie.
Unfortunately, Countdown has taken a simple idea and made it
overly complex and hopelessly vague.
The clash of new technology and old mysticism tries to give the film a
unique edge, but that falls flat as well.
I admired the film’s spirit and it’s attempts at creating a creepy
atmosphere, but, in the end, this is one app which I would delete.
Countdown
goes on the “Do Not Call List” on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of Universal Studios
Home Entertainment. The film has been
letterboxed at 2.35:1 and the Disc contains an AVC 1080p HD transfer which runs
at an average of 28 Mbps. The image
is sharp and clear, showing no overt grain and no defects from the source
materials. The colors look very
good and the image is never overly dark or bright.
The level detail is pleasing to the eye and the depth works well.
The Disc carries a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which runs at 48 kHz and
an average of 4.0 Mbps. The track
provides clear dialogue and sound effects.
The mix presented here is very effective and plays well with the film’s
horror aesthetic, as we get copious surround sound and subwoofer effects during
the “scary” scenes. There are some
very nice moments in the hospital where sounds are coming from different parts
of the room and they are well-represented in the front and rear channels.
The Countdown Blu-ray Disc contains no extra features.