So I really enjoyed the premise of this film, but much like many horrors that I have watched in the past, I didn’t enjoy the execution.

Countdown is an app that if you download it, it will tell you when you are going to die. However this app is connected to a demon that regardless of what you do to try and stop yourself dying at the time it tells you, it will cause your death in one way or another. However my first big issue with this film is how everyone in it seems to have their ‘user agreement cancelled’, meaning if you try to prevent your death your user agreement was avoided and you would die some other way anyway.

Now the reason I have an issue with that is because every single character that we saw that was going to die relatively soon had a user agreement cancelled and that’s because humans have free choice. When you tell someone they’re going to die in two days of course they’re going to change their plans and not just carry on willy-nilly like nothing is wrong, they’re going to get a bit spooked whether they believe it or not. And so I had issues with that because we aren’t just on one path, we can make choices that can change that path, and the demon should account for that and be able to work with that rather than creating a very easy work around. With human choice I feel much like the Final Destination movies, if we saw the characters trying to combat their death time and then seeing that they still died regardless of what they did, that would’ve been much more horrifying than just being a demon pop out go blah and then kill them.

The premise of this film is really interesting especially as so many people these days download apps and don’t read the terms and conditions and don’t even give it a second thought. There is so much depth to even one application that anyone could be listening to you at any moment and could do whatever they want with your information, so why couldn’t a demon, if they were real, attach itself to an app and kill you? It’s basically Ouija but with something much more accessible to people that people will do as a laugh and as a joke just because they think it’s funny.

If you want to give this film a go, if you enjoy silly horrors that have far too many jump scares that they often repeat – which was also an issue for me – then maybe you’ll enjoy it. I didn’t enjoy it simply because I thought it could’ve been so much better and there was a lot of cop outs unfortunately with this film. However I really enjoy the premise and it’s a shame that the story didn’t go a different way because I think it could’ve been 10x better.

Would you want to know when you’re going to die?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding