Countdown

Available digitally today!

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Seemingly arriving out of nowhere, the first horror feature from writer/director Justin Dec doesn't particularly break new ground, but it's pretty darn entertaining despite it.

Taking a nod from movies like "One Missed Call" and "Ring," "Countdown" has a simple premise: A bunch of twenty-somethings downloads a novelty app on their phones that professes to tell the user the exact time of their death. While clearly no one believes it, when one girl has only a few hours to live and actually does die preternaturally, people start wondering if the app is real.

The wonderful Elizabeth Lail ("You") is our lead her as a nurse who downloads the app after the boyfriend of the killed girl starts to believe the app is valid. Finding she has less than three days to live, she dismisses it at first, but when creepy things start happening to her, she isn't so sure.

Dec does a stupendous job at keeping the jump scares coming and truly surprising even faithful horror fans who usually know when they're about to happen. The script has a sense of humor about itself with some characters - namely an IT guy (Tom Segura) and a priest obsessed with demons (P.J. Byrne) – that keep the proceedings feeling fresh and bit winking. Sure, the tone shifts during these scenes, but they add to the overall fun of the movie.

The one misstep here is a subplot about a married doctor (Peter Facinelli) with a penchant for hitting on his staff. This is amusingly used later on as a big plot point, but it also seems a bit extreme. That said, you can't really guess as to how our leads will get themselves out of their predicament, so the audience is kept on the edge of its seat trying to figure out how it's all going to go down.

The concept is a blatant rip-off of a million Japanese remakes before it, but it gleefully works as a fun, sit-back-and-get-scared Halloween romp. And with an ending that promises more to come, the "Countdown" has just begun for sequels to follow.