'Countdown' Movie Trailer Delivers 'The Ring' for the Smartphone Era

If you give someone a cursed video tape from The Ring now, in 2019, there would be no movie. Aside from nostalgic collectors, VHS tapes have gone the way of the dinosaur. This means evil spirits need to catch up with the modern age, which brings us to Countdown.

It’s Friday baby, and Apple spent the week revealing a new iPhone. Enter: Countdown, a new tech-centric supernatural horror movie from director Justin Dec in his feature film debut. (By the way, in case you forgot, there was a recent sequel to The Ring, 2017’s Rings that brought Samara into a viral video specter.)

Quinn (played by Elizabeth Lail, from ABC’s Once Upon a Time) is a nurse who downloads a hot new app that claims to count down to the moment you die. When the app tells Quinn she only has two days to live, she tries to figure out how to beat the clock. Also, there are monsters.

While Countdown seems like two different horror movie concepts stuffed into one script, the trailer promises a confident feature debut from Dec, who directed the delightful 2013 short Jennifer Lawrence Is Coming.

Besides the obvious comparisons to The Ring, Countdown also bears some resemblance to movies like 2011’s In Time (remember that one? That’s the one Justin Timberlake spends four minutes for a cup of coffee) and recent mid-budget horror thrillers movies like Happy Death Day and Searching.

Of course, the inclusion of demonic monsters and their association with a trendy app is inexplicable through the trailer. The element of monsters seems tacked on for what is basically a 2019 riff on Final Destination. But so long as the movie delivers on all the thrills and chills audiences want from a low-stakes horror movie, then all is good with the world.

Countdown is in theaters October 25.