Countdown

There is actually nothing more for which there is also a matching app, whether weather, directions, dating or sex. But at a party, a group of teenagers accidentally discover a brand new app that predicts your exact time of death. Of course, this sounds like a cheap fake. Even when one of the girls from the party, who is predicted to die the same night, dies at that very time, young nurse Quinn (Elizabeth Lail) doesn't believe this app is real. And so she agrees to download it onto her smartphone, completely unthinkingly accepting the terms of use. A grave mistake, because not only do mysterious deaths start piling up in connection with the app. Quinn also gets the message that she herself has only two days left. Little time to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding the app and prevent her own demise.

Countdown is a sort of final destination for the smartphone generation. The idea is simple and somehow feels familiar. This may be due to the fact that the implementation is not exactly sparing with all kinds of genre clichés. Most of the characters remain correspondingly pale, which doesn't exactly encourage the viewer to sympathize with their fate. Only a smartphone salesman with hacker qualities, played by comedian Tom Segura, and P.J. Byrne as a somewhat unusual priest stand out from the otherwise stereotypical cast. Elizabeth Lail, who was convincing in the first season of the Netflix series You, fails here to add any interesting edges to her very template-like character.

Although there's plenty to criticize about the film, Countdown is, on balance, quite entertaining. Sure, it doesn't really offer anything new. The outcome of nearly every scene is predictable as is the fact that the door is left ajar for a sequel at the end. Still, director Justin Dec manages to build up some tension and decent entertainment value. As a genre fan, you'll be fed familiar ingredients, but still leave the cinema pleasantly satiated. Whether you absolutely need to have seen the film on the big screen is another question. Who does not mind to get here only simple entertainment according to scheme, which can solve quite a cinema ticket.

For all others, however, it is enough to wait for the home theater release. Because for an entertaining evening of television, this rather tame horror flick offers enough worth seeing. To justify a visit to the cinema, on the other hand, it should have been something more. That's why in the end it's only enough for one: Still worth seeing with cutbacks!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp