Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Countdown Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman January 25, 2020

It's impossible to watch Countdown and not think about Final Destination and its various sequels. The two share much in common, dealing with the idea of predetermination and the inescapability thereof. In Final Destination, victims who somehow cheat death are tracked down and repeatedly put in harm's way until they succumb to fate, usually to very bloody result. In Countdown, much the same is true, but it's more hip and cutting edge: a phone app counts down the years, months, days, minutes, and seconds until death. There's no escaping the clock: no deleting the app, no rewriting the code, and even religious protection only goes so far. It's a straightforward concept that by all rights should have resulted in a terrible, bottom dwelling genre film, but it's actually a decent little thrill ride and takes some albeit brief time to dabble in the metaphysical rather than just lump together jump scares for 90 minutes.

When looking up the latest dieting app, a girl stumbles on an app that promises to tell users when they will die. Her friends downloads it. “It’s just an app” they say. It’s all for fun, they believe. Most find they have decades to live. Courtney (Anne Winters) discovers she only has three hours left to live. Her worry turns to panic when her boyfriend Evan (Dillon Lane) offers to drive her home, drunk. She refuses the ride and walks instead. She receives a notice that her agreed upon terms have been broken. Seven minutes to go. Return home. She avoids being impaled in Evan’s bloody wreck. She dies, anyway, horrifically and supernaturally.

Evan survives the wreck and finds himself in the hospital waiting to die in his upcoming surgery; his Countdown app says his number’s just about up, and after what happened to Courtney, he believes it. He’s reassured by a kindly, pretty nurse named Quinn (Elizabeth Lail) who reluctantly decides to download the app herself. The verdict: two days. When Evan dies in the hospital stairwell, Quinn panics and quickly learns that there’s no escape from her appointed time. Even a new phone cannot set her free from the app's ironclad user agreement. When she’s suspended from work, framed for inappropriate behavior she did not commit, she joins forces with a young man named Matt (Jordan Calloway) who also has only hours to live. As the two struggle to understand the app and run from fate, they realize that the app will stop at nothing to ensure they die on time.

There are classic jump scares in Countdown, but the movie more or less relegates them to support status rather than dominant component. There are CGI demons, but the film makes sure digital visuals are not its primary source of terror. The movie is not particularly scary, then, as it asks audiences to buy into a hybrid of supernatural meets digital terrors, which it does support and define through a prism of ancient nightmares. The story posits that the app is simply a modern day equivalent of a scroll, that what is happening to Quinn and company has been going on for centuries. This is simply the 21st century equivalent, and it's more widely accessible, too. With everyone a slave to the phone, with everyone swiping through user agreements without a care in the world for privacy or what they may be getting into, the devil is literally in the details. The movie might have worked better from a foundational perspective if it had dared to expand its reach and go all social commentary with cell phone addiction and mindless agreement to service and privacy dismissal in exchange for instant gratification and whatever ease or benefit the app promises. Rather than a few fleeting moments when the characters realize that the user agreement is basically a death sentence, Countdown might have been more effective with a greater emphasis on real life and supernatural horror parallels rather than focus almost entirely on the latter. Still, it's a decent little concept that, for what it is and how it's presented, results in a movie that is, surprisingly, not half bad. There will be no awards season praise but audiences can do much worse with relatively safe and mostly relatable contemporary Horror.

Countdown Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Countdown's 1080p transfer scores high for its consistency and accuracy. The 1080p presentation does not stand apart for advanced excellence or any sort of eye-popping visual intensity but it's very capable within the digitally shot parameters and appears to translate the source material to natural, near flawless result. All of the basics are in order. Viewers will note the fine level of detail visible on faces and clothes. While the picture lacks the razor sharp intimacy of the finest digital productions, the transfer seems to squeeze out most of the available information; it's unlikely a UHD would vastly improve upon the experience in this area. Location textures are clear and precise, ranging from hospital room doodads to cell phone repair shop gizmos. Colors are fine, holding true in well lit conditions, such as hospital corridors, while low light arenas, which are dominant during most of the action when characters are near death, produce commendably stable black levels and refuse to push noise too high. One of the more visually interesting moments is when Quinn, Matt, Quinn's sister Jordan (Talitha Bateman), and a priest who is an expert on demons (P.J. Byrne) encircle themselves in blessed salts; when the demon's robe touches the barrier, it catches fire and the orange sparks light nicely against the dark backdrop. Skin tones are spot-on. The image suffers from no distracting compression issues.

Countdown Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Countdown's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack is effective without pushing to any sonic limits. The track is fairly straightforward, expanding in action and terror but offering little beyond a basic front side engagement elsewhere. Dialogue drives most of the movie, and it presents with appropriate prioritization, detail, and center placement save for one or two opportunities to reverberate, such as when Quinn and Matt enter into an empty church sanctuary in search of answers to their digital demon-devil. The track finds occasional bursts of sonic expansion and low end extension in the build-up to and execution of its "horror" moments, such as when the power goes out before deaths, notably in a bathroom in chapter nine. Audiences will be able to track sound as necessary and enjoy the weighty expansion as it comes. Atmospheric effects help draw listeners into some of the more sonically dense locations, such as the hospital. This is a solid track; its performance is hardly noteworthy, but it's an effective companion to the movie.

Countdown Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Countdown contains no supplemental content. A DVD copy of the film and an iTunes digital copy code are included with purchase. This release ships with an embossed slipcover.

Countdown Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

One of the things working in Countdown's favor is that the PG-13 rating doesn't equal a watered-down genre experience. For the most part, the Horror comes from seemingly innocuous numbers, and the fear is generated vicariously through the frightened characters and the time crunch they face. There's a little bit of blood and some creepy demonic renderings, but the movie doesn't appear to sacrifice in order to garner a "date night" rating. This is hardly great or compelling cinema, but as disposable, easily digested entertainment it's not half bad. Universal's Blu-ray is featureless, which is a mild disappointment but not a surprise. Video and audio presentations are up to par. Recommended.