Prescribed Conclusion: Countdown (2019)
My dear readers, while I derive great satisfaction from manning my very own digital publication, I often wonder if it is inevitable for someone in my position to find themselves puttering about from one task to another in a futile attempt to keep current with one’s responsibilities. I wake in the morning and spend the first three quarters of an hour banishing the black spirits that haunt my bedchamber and pry me from sleep. I follow this activity with some light calisthenics. Then there is tea to consider, breakfast and difficult negotiations with a foul-tempered muskrat who has made a home of our mailbox and a nest of our missives. I use the next few hours to assure myself that courting advertisers would impinge the purity of my endeavors, and once I have finally settled into my day slippers there is barely enough time to watch eight to twelve hours of horror films. I hardly have cause for complaint as all of these labors fulfill me most thoroughly but I am still very much left with the impression that the days are simply too short.
The application’s novelty value declines sharply after death
Recently registered nurse Quinn Harris (Elizabeth Lail) knows all about feeling as though there simply is not enough time to go around. She has recently downloaded a telephone application called “Countdown,” one which promises to pinpoint exactly when the user will die. A remarkable number of people find this to be a marvelous notion and the morbid content does not put them off in the slightest. One’s own passing is so frivolous a subject that it becomes fodder for light ribbing about how exercise and eating habits may factor into one’s remaining moments. Quinn is in a somewhat less jovial mood about the whole thing, as Countdown has hardly been generous with her allotment. According to her phone, she has but three days of life left.
Some in her profession might write this whole incident off as medically improbable but Quinn becomes deeply concerned about the legitimacy of Countdown’s forecasts after a patient at her hospital, concerned with his own sparse time on the clock, meets with a peculiar and precisely predicted demise. I mean really, while the outcome is not one to look forward to, Countdown does predict one’s death down to the very second, which is quite a nifty little trick if you ask me. At any rate, Quinn goes fussing about with her fate in the hopes of outsmarting the application, only to discover that doing so catches the attention of demonic forces that rather fancy people meeting with the their prescribed conclusions. And while losing one’s life is hardly a pleasant experience either way, Quinn consults an expert who assures her that a demonic death is far from preferable.
Countdown’s customer service leaves room for improvement
I must admit, my benevolent readers, that it is difficult for me to comment on the latest available technology, as my familiarity is not as broad as it could be. The only telephone I use is not the least bit mobile and I am completely satisfied with my experience thus far. However, I am aware that those in possession of “smart” telephones are really all sorts of enthused about the things, so much so that much ink has been devoted to a general over-dependence that has sprung up through the years. There are even, as I understand it, applications devoted to reminding the user to put the bally thing down every now and again. While newspaper articles and gentle chiding are certainly useful, few routes seem more effective than reminding the owner that every moment is precious. And what better way to do so than to do that by emphasizing their finite nature? With Countdown, writer and director Justin Dec has stumbled across a sensational remedy for those weary of their screens, and suggests that while technological capacity of modern telephones is vast and impressive, that does not necessarily mean we should spend all of our time with them. I can only hope that any tie-in products are as effectual as their cinematic counterpart.
Countdown runs 90 minutes and is rated PG-13 for terror, violence, bloody images, suggestive material, language and thematic elements.
