‘COUNTDOWN’ Review

The worst thing any film, especially a horror film, is buying into its own hype. In today’s market where Netflix can pump out a horror movie every 2.8 seconds, no film is irreplaceable or so sacred that another can’t take it down. Unfortunately, Countdown, a film from new writer/director Justin Dec buys into its own hype wholeheartedly. A story with so little depth as to simply be about an app that can tell you when you die, Countdown stands to answer the bonus of not being able to change your death time. While the film ultimately weaves in and out of religion and the supernatural, the story is very vapid.

Centering around one victim, Quinn Harris (You’s Elizabeth Lail), the story attempts to break a new age version of an age-old curse. Here the rub: there’s nothing here. The fact is that most of the movie, you see nothing but forced emotionalism to try to develop characters that really don’t have anything to develop from. This movie takes the acting of its cast, which is low quality to begin with, and kind of sprinkles in this terribly created story that it’s impossible to make good anyway.

The movie isn’t scary. It uses long and drawn out jump to scares to accomplish a low-grade fear component. The resulting “killer” of the movie is silly looking and just kind of sad. I think this movie borrowed so many elements from so many other movies that when a moment to become original presented itself, there was no creativity in the tank. I wish I could say that the premise itself had some promise but really, it’s all very contrived.

The biggest flaw of this film, however, is that it’s just kind of boring. There is nothing here that will feel new or inventive and it will inevitably bore you after a while. The movie tries to spice itself up with some strange humor, but while funny, it seems to make you feel even worse about how strange and off-putting the film is. To be honest, this is a Netflix film with a bigger budget. And to that end, the promotional campaign, which is reminiscent of Paranormal Activity, makes it worse. The movie tries to make it seem as though it’s too scary to finish, as Paranormal Activity was for some people during its original run. But instead, you are left with this mediocre horror film that doesn’t live anywhere its hype. My advice: wait till it comes out on digital/Blu-ray and then maybe give it a try.

COUNTDOWN is in theatres now!