Arka Mukhopadhyay
Directed by Justin Dec in his feature debut and based on the director’s own homonymous short film, the 2019 horror thriller movie ’Countdown’ goes off the rails too soon. You know how they say that there is an app for that. Well, there is an app that can prophesize your death. It could have stopped at that, but the app is also probably demonically possessed. However, you may wonder whether there is an app by the name on the fringes of the internet. If the question ruins your good night’s sleep, let us investigate the matter.
Is Countdown App Real? Why Can’t It Be Deleted?
At the center of the uproar is an android application unassumingly named ‘Countdown,’ giving the movie its moniker. At the beginning of the film, Kate divulges her secret to dieting to a group of friends — an app called “Countdown to Skinny.” While looking for the app, Courtney stumbles upon another shady app that claims to predict people’s death down to microseconds. It sure sounds intriguing, and all the friends download it on their phones, placing a bet. The bet entails that the person who dies first has to finish all the drinks on the table. To her dismay, Courtney is the unfortunate person.
Thankfully, Courtney’s boyfriend Evan comes to the rescue, finishing all the drinks. Evan assures Courtney that the app is fake because how can a cellphone application possibly give accurate death predictions? Well, Evan would think otherwise the following morning when he finds out that Courtney has died, fulfilling her countdown. More so, Courtney was paranoid enough to bail out when Evan offered her a lift, and Evan got into an accident around the same time as Courtney’s death in the shower. Therefore, she would still die if she was in the car. The fate set in stone by the app seems unalterable for Evan as well.
While Evan dies, he ignites a curiosity in the mind of Quinn, the trainee nurse, who also downloads the app. She finds that she has around two days to live and tries every method under the sun to get rid of the app. She tries to uninstall it like Courtney and Evan, but it shows her the same message – ‘User Agreement Broken.’ She may not have read the agreement carefully the first time, but her fateful acquaintance Matt has an idea. He encourages flat-earther Jerry to install the app to take a look into the user agreement.
It turns out that the user cannot alter their fate. As the terms and license section says, “Any attempt to use information derived from Countdown to alter the user’s fate will result in a breach of the agreement.” Thus, they realize that they have a demonic app on their phones that they cannot delete. Moreover, even when Quinn destroys her old phone and buys a new one, the app mysteriously reappears there. Quinn comes out of the gruesome finale pretty much unscathed, thinking she has duped the devil. In the end, she goes to visit her mother’s grave.
As she is about to leave the graveyard, Quinn receives a final notification on her new phone. An updated version of the app, ‘Countdown 2.0,’ has installed itself on her phone. While you are hoping for a sequel, you may also wonder whether there is really an app that predicts the time of your death. Also, are there apps that you cannot delete? The answer to the latter is a clear no. In the case of the former, we probed deeper to find an app of the same name on the Google Play Store. But it seems like a fan impressed with the movie came up with the app later. However, you can uninstall this one, so there’s no need to worry if you accidentally (or willfully) install it on your phone.
Read More: Is Countdown Based on A True Story?
