Countdown posits that in a paranoid world of self-doubt and endless anxieties, caused by the deluge of overflowing content, there’s one app that could put an end to never-ending questions with one simple, and final, piece of information: accept the terms and conditions and see the date you are going to die, down to the second.
It’s an ominous promise, one that relies on a perverse curiosity — in the user, and in the cinema viewer — to see what happens when a live clock decides how long you’ll stay alive. Will it put your mind at rest for years to come, or set off a ticking time bomb due to explode too soon?
Elizabeth Lail has everygirl charisma as Quinn, and can’t resist the all-in trend to download Countdown. She finds out she only has a couple of days left — and so unfolds a nervous mission to get to the root of the hellscape. She, and the storyline, shows promise, but ultimately has too little to work with. She looks and sounds like every hopeful and wholesome heroine thrown in the middle of a nightmare, and the haunting visions of wispy black capes, greyed skin and bared, sharp teeth are as generic as they come.
There are a few attempts at comedy, from a lazy tech guy proud of his jail-breaking skills to a hipster superstitious priest, but the film doesn’t have enough in the way of robust world-building to make credible the reality of a contemporary app built, allegedly, by contemporary people. The neat subplot against sexual harassment in the workplace mostly works, and a Frozen-esque ‘sisters over misters’ moral ties things up nicely. It’s just a shame that the app’s one-line pitch — telling the user that life-changing (or -ending) information is only one download away — is as deep and complex as the threat gets.
