Director: Justin Dec
Notable cast: Elizabeth Lail, Jordan Calloway, Talitha Eliana
Bateman, PJ Byrne
Horror is an interesting genre to be a specific fan of. It
tends to have the least studio oversight owing to lower overall budgets. This
has been used to phenomenal effect over the years telling bigger, more
insightful stories than you’d assume its plot allows. Hereditary and
it’s exploration of family dynamics and legacy, Babadook and it’s
exploration of mental health, The Shining and whatever interpretation
is popular at the time. On the
other hand, this can go the other way as
well. With low budgets and low expectations come the people who see horror as
low hanging fruit. A quick buck to be made, since they only have to be
interesting enough to get comparatively few butts in seats to be profitable,
and even if they’re not, they can license the movie out to several streaming
services. The bottom line is they will make money, by and large, so they can be
low effort.
I’m not trying to brush this lower effort class of film with
a broad, universally terrible brush, because that wouldn’t be strictly fair.
There are flashes of real ideas in these sometimes. I’m not saying Countdown
is one of these better than it should be movies, quite the opposite actually,
but I am trying to highlight that I believe there was potential, and perhaps
potential in the future, because the idea here is actually pretty cool. In
theory.