Now, if you take measures to prevent your imminent demise and cheat Death, that’s when the app comes into play. Not accepting your fate is a violation of the user agreement. You’ll still die as scheduled, even if you don’t accept the ride from a drunk driver or take the plane trip that was supposed to do it, only now you also get harassed by a demon beforehand. But, again, you still die. It’s like Final Destination<\/em> without the cleverness, The Ring<\/em> without the scariness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n (A better version, aimed at people over 40: The app tells you when you’re going to die, and the horror comes from finding out you still have like 40 years left.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our plucky heroine, Quinn (Elizabeth Lail), is a newly credentialed nurse who works for a handsy doctor (Peter Facinelli) at a hospital that conveniently has an abandoned wing perfect for spooky third-act battles with the supernatural. Quinn is displeased when she downloads the app and learns she has only three days to live, and replacing the phone doesn’t help — the app shows up again anyway. At the phone store, run by a needlessly rude hacker (Tom Segura) who’s good for a few chuckles, Quinn meets a young man named Matt (Jordan Calloway) who’s in the same boat. The two seek the aid of an excitable Catholic priest (P.J. Byrne), possibly a stoner, who’s found snacking on communion wafers and is REALLY into demons and stuff. He, too, is slightly amusing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The work of first-time writer-director Justin Dec, Countdown<\/em> is the kind of painfully generic horror throwaway that usually comes out in the movie graveyard of January, not plum spots like Halloween. It follows the template with precision (pre-credits scene of a random death, guilt-ridden backstories for the lead characters, ghostly sights in mirrors that vanish when you turn around to look), without enthusiasm or variation. The basic problem with the premise — just don’t download the app, dummy, and then you won’t be tempted to try to change your fate — is not addressed. It’s while wasting 90 minutes on mediocrities like this that you start to appreciate how short life really is. C<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In Countdown, the mildly stupid teen horror flick about a phone app that tells you how long you have to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":12817,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[340,1381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/crookedc.png\")
<\/p>\n\n\n\n1 hr., 30 min.; rated PG-13 for terror, violence, bloody images, suggestive material, language and thematic elements<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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