COUNTDOWN (2019)
Blu-ray+DVD+Digital
Blu-ray+DVD+Digital
Region Code: A
Rating: PG-13
Duration: 90 Minutes
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.39:1)
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Director: Justin Dec
Cast: Elizabeth Lail, Jordan Calloway, Talitha Bateman, Tichina Arnold, P.J. Byrne, Peter Facinelli
Countdown (2019) is a kid-friendly slice of PG-13 rated techno-horror, a sub-genre that started with stuff like feardotcom (2002) but has evolved into what I like to call App-horror, and fr the most part it's just as innocuous as it sounds. In this film we have a nurse Quinn Harris (Elizabeth Lail, Dead of Summer) discovering that her teen sister, and a bunch of her friends, have downloaded a new app on their phones that tells you when you're gonna die, complete with a running countdown, and it turns out that the app's countdown is uncannily accurate!
We follow her as she tries to thwart the countdown app to save her sister and herself, enlisting a phone store employee to hack the app and a demonology-obsessed priest (P.J. Byrne, Final Destination 5) from the Catholic church, to varying degrees of success, but the countdown continues and stuff happens.
The film has a few fun quirks I liked about it, like the idea that if you attempt to alter your fate, thereby breaking the user agreement, a demon will appear and kill you. There's also a fun running gag wherein all the assholes who download the app, including a Holocaust denying barfly, seem to have very long lives ahead of them, while anyone
remotely kind-hearted are fated to die within days or even hours of accepting the app's user agreement.
The phone store employee and priest enlisted to help stop the killer-app are fun additions, adding a comedy element, but sometimes the tone of the film swings so wildly it's seems like they're in a completely different film, but I dig 'em alright. Something that felt really shoehorned into this supernatural app-horror is a unecassary #timesup angle with Quinn having to go deal with a predatory doctor at the hospital, played by Peter Facinelli (TV's Supergirl), a guy who screams creep at first sight. This whole sub-plot could have been left on the cutting room floor and it would not have been missed.
The film has a sort of Final Destination by way of The Ring feel bout it, total teen-friendly stuff with a kernel of good idea at it's core but it's executed poorly, the tone shifts wildly and the rules seem to change at the writer/director's whim. As stated there's a demon here but for reason's unexplained, it sometimes appears as someone the victim knows, sort of like It Follows, but it's never explained, and while not every horror film needs a set of rules this is a film that sets out to have a certain set of riles right from the beginning.
The good stuff, the cast is uniformly decent throughout, the weak-link here is the half-hearted script. The FX are decent, the look of the demon is pretty good too. The film is briskly paced, I just found it disposable as all heck, but if you're looking for something not too scary to watch with some younger teens it's not awful, but it's not very good either.
Audio/Video: Countdown (2019) arrives on Blu-ray from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment in 1080p HD framed in 2.39:1 widescreen. It's a solid looking image with strong detail and clarity throughout, colors looks accurate and black levels are strong. The English DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround has strong surround elements that kick in during the action and suspense scenes, optional English subtitles are provided.
This is an extras-empty Blu-ray, offering absolutely nothing, zilch, zip, zero! We do get get a DVD and a digital iTunes copy of the movie. The 2-disc release comes housed in standard double-disc Blu-ray keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork featuring the original movie poster, it also includes an embossed slipcover with raised lettering on the spine and other relief features on the cover artwork. Inside there's a iTunes digital code for the film.
Countdown (2019) is a disposable single-watch experience, not awful but it's maybe something worse, straight-up innocuous. The best case scenario for this is that you're babysitting your sister's kids this weekend and they're not quite at the age where you wanna unleash the terror of something like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre on them, like my uncle did, but you want to watch something that will scare them but not cause your'e sister to hate you because the kids won't stop crying, but then again, why would you do that when you could just pull something way-cooler like Monster Squad or The Gate off the shelf and be the cool uncle for the rest of your life?
