'Countdown' Trailer: Death? There's An App For That

What if there was an app that could predict the exact date and time of your death? Would you download it? And what if you did download it, only to find that your demise was scheduled to happen very, very soon? That's the premise of Countdown, a new horror movie about an app that kills people. I think? It's not entirely clear if it's the phone app that's killing off folks, or if there's some sort of demon lurking about. Watch the Countdown trailer below and see what you think.

Countdown Trailer

Well, this sure looks goofy. But it could be the fun kind of goofy, and there's nothing wrong with that. Countdown appears to be a blend of the Final Destination films, The Ring, and even Happy Death Day, cherrypicking elements from all of those films to tell a new tale of phone-based horror. In Countdown, "when a young nurse (Elizabeth Lail) downloads an app that claims to predict exactly when a person is going to die, it tells her she only has three days to live. With time ticking away and death closing in, she must find a way to save her life before time runs out."

The film was written and directed by Justin Dec, and stars Elizabeth Lail, Jordan Calloway, Talitha Bateman, Tichina Arnold, P.J. Byrne, and Peter Facinelli. And here's the best part: the poster. Not so much for its design, but for its amazing tagline:

That's right: "Death? There's An App For That." How can you not love a tagline like that? No matter how Countdown turns out, we can all take solace in knowing that someone got paid to come up with that tagline. And I sincerely hope they were paid well, because they deserve it. Beyond that, though, I can't say this trailer does much for me. There's a glimmer of Happy Death Day-like humor lurking somewhere in this footage – and that seems like the best way to approach this material. But much of the trailer leans into the seriousness of it all, and I just don't know if that can work. We'll know for sure when Countdown starts ticking in theaters on October 25, 2019.