If you downloaded a gimmicky timer app that
gave you less than three days to live, and other people who downloaded it started dying
exactly when it predicted, what would you do? Have you ever wanted to know exactly how much
time you have left on Earth? It turns out there’s an app for that, and
it works a little too well. Apparently, Hell has a dev team, and their
algorithm is a lot more reliable than YouTube’s. These teens are about to download their own
deaths. While enjoying a wild night of cheap beer
and bad decisions, a group of teenagers stumble upon an unusual cell phone app that poses
a simple question: “If you could know exactly when you were going to die, would you want
to know?” Among the young friends, the answer is a resounding
“yes,” all except for Courtney. A little peer pressure is all it takes to
bring her around, and she reluctantly pulls up the app, known simply as Countdown. After blowing by the terms and conditions,
she arrives at her prognosis: three hours and thirty seven minutes. Fast forward a few hours and Courtney’s
boyfriend Evan staggers up to his Jeep to drive them both home. Seeing he can barely even get his key in the
ignition, Courtney suggests they walk back instead. Evan won’t have it, attributing her perfectly
rational fear of riding with a drunk driver to the “stupid app” she downloaded earlier. He swears he won’t get her killed, but Courtney
puts her foot down and refuses to stay in the vehicle. Like a true gentleman, Evan pouts at her commitment
to self preservation before speeding off to let her walk home alone in the middle of the
night. Just then, Courtney gets a notification from
the Countdown app claiming she broke the user agreement. According to the counter, she now has less
than eight minutes to make her peace with the universe. Courtney reaches her front door with less
than two minutes to spare. Courtney turns off her phone and goes to the
bathroom sink for a glass of water. Some rustling in the shower prompts her to
pull back the curtain, but seeing nothing unusual, she goes back to the task of hydration. Strangely enough, the shower curtain seems
to close back up all on its own. Courtney’s phone comes back to life with
a final scream from the app. She turns to find just eight seconds left
on the counter when an unseen force Sam Fisher's her up into the ceiling. With mere seconds remaining, Courtney falls
head first onto the bathtub below, slumping over dead just as the clock reaches zero. Elsewhere at that same moment, Evan’s Jeep
is smashed head-on into a tree. As he looks around dazed and bleeding, he
discovers a huge branch jammed through the passenger seat, exactly where Courtney would
have been sitting had she gone with him. Looks like the app has already claimed its
first victim, leaving us with only five left on the board. Explanation: Evidently, God didn’t put too many. It doesn’t exactly take a brain surgeon
to realize this app should probably be avoided. Anyone who has ever seen an after school special
should know that peer pressure is never a good reason to do anything, even something
as seemingly harmless as downloading a cell phone app. For all we know, this thing could be a crypto
miner or straight up malware. If it was from the Google Play store or Apple
store, okay maybe, but I don’t know what backpage app store this is. Just as Courtney’s about to install, we
can see the app has received an average rating of three point six out of five stars. Pretty high for a timer that kills people. It would definitely be worth skimming through
a few of the reviews to see if any genuine deaths are reported in connection with the
app. You could even run some of the names through
Legacy.com to see the official obituaries of the deceased. Obviously, no one expects this app to be legit,
but even if it’s just a random number generator with a timer, it would still be nice to know
you’re not agreeing to have your organs harvested in the terms of service. But it’s probably worth your time, especially
when downloading a sketchy app you’ve never heard of. If you’re a curious cat, you can actually
download a real countdown app like 10 million other dumbasses. I’m pretty sure it won’t kill you, but
it’s buggy, seizure inducing, and full of ads. No hate. A Demon’s gotta get that bag somehow with
all the inflation, and I’m sure gas prices in Hell aren’t any better than they are
up here. Forget the countdown though, Courtney needs
to reprioritize what she’s afraid of. Jesus. Downloading an app has you sweating bullets
but you still hop into a car with a stumbling drunk? Yeah, Denzel Washington might have been able
to barrel roll a 747 into a wedding ceremony without knocking over the cake, but mixing
motor vehicles and booze is a great way to land yourself and/or others in a mortuary. I’d offer to drive, but it doesn’t seem
like Evan would be willing to hand over his keys. Courtney ends up making the seemingly right
decision by getting out of the Jeep, but instead of immediately walking home alone, I would
have gone back into the party and sought out someone to walk with me, preferably a group. We might even be able to score a ride back
with someone who actually wants to see thirty. Better yet, with how anxious she is about
the app, she should stay with a friend or hangout at the party. Going home to a dark, empty house to watch
your death clock run out doesn’t seem wise, and, worst case scenario, you’ll want some
witnesses around to keep your killer from racking up a body count unnoticed. The fact that she clearly would have died
had she ridden with Evan is a disturbing coincidence, especially when paired with the Countdown
app. We don’t know for sure that the tree branch
went through the windshield at the exact moment the clock struck zero, but that is certainly
what is being implied. Unfortunately, Courtney pulled the shortest
straw out of her friend group, and with only 3 hours to contemplate her situation, she
wouldn’t have been able to invest too much time researching the app’s legitimacy or
ways to possibly change her fate. Sometime later, nursing intern Quinn makes
her rounds delivering meals to various patients around the hospital. Much to her frustration, one of the beds is
empty, prompting her to investigate an off-limits area of the facility currently undergoing
renovations. At the far end of a dingy corridor, Quinn
finds Evan beside an open window sporting a leg cast. Quinn assumes he’s nervous about his surgery
tomorrow, but Evan produces his phone to show her the Countdown app, citing the nineteen
hours and forty three minutes remaining as the source of his anxiety. He goes on to explain that the app knew his
girlfriend, the late Courtney, was meant to die beside him in the car accident, and even
though she opted not to go with him, she still died regardless. After taking him back to his room, a senior
nurse orders Quinn to follow her. At first the young intern assumes the worst,
but it turns out to be a surprise party celebrating her status as a full fledged nurse. As the healthcare workers share some cake,
two of them argue over whether one’s over consumption of sweets will put them in an
early grave. Quinn chimes in claiming there’s an app
for that Dr. Sullivan and one of the other nurses eagerly download the Countdown app
to uncover their respective fates. Just then, a desperate man emerges from the
elevator carrying an unconscious woman. The staff quickly rush to her aid and determine
she’s OD’d. Without hesitation, they administer a shot
of Narcan, bringing her back from the brink before she could punch out for good. Following the ordeal, Quinn ends her shift
for the day and heads home. As she waits for the elevator, she goes through
her messages to find a group text linking to the Countdown app. Unphased by Evan’s account from earlier,
Quinn casually clicks through and enters her information, accepting the terms of service
without so much as skimming them first. Much to her horror, Quinn’s countdown shows
only two days, twenty two hours, and thirty seven minutes. The next day, Evan sits petrified awaiting
a surgical procedure related to his injuries. He stares down at the counter on his phone,
which shows only three minutes remaining. Instead of meeting his fate head on, Evan
decides to make a break for it. As he crutches his way to the exit, his phone
screeches with a notification from Countdown, “User Agreement Broken.” Evan looks up at a nearby safety mirror to
find a cloaked figure standing motionless behind him. The unknown entity suddenly darts across the
hallway, sending him scrambling into a nearby stairwell. Just then, the lights go out all around him
and he hears a door open several floors below, followed by the sound of footsteps rapidly
ascending the stairs. Terrified, he tries going back the way he
came, but the door to the stairwell seems to have locked behind him. The footsteps stop momentarily, only to reappear
right beside him. Slowly, he scans the darkness with his phone
light to find Courtney, only she’s not quite herself. Five floors down, Evan’s phone clatters
to the ground as the last few seconds run out. Just as the clock hits zero, Evan’s head
meets the bottom step with a meaty smack. Two down, four to go. Wow, the Grim Reaper sure likes drop testing
people’s skulls. Let’s start with Evan’s story. There’s no way Evan could have known Courtney
died at the exact same moment he crashed into the tree, but the fact it still happened on
the same night is too strange to ignore. The way she died is hardly something anyone
would write off as a mere accident. The coroner would have easily been able to
determine that her skull hit the bathtub with considerably more force than if she had simply
fallen. It’s not like anyone would have assumed
Courtney was yeeted across the room by a Satanic smartphone app, but she sure as hell didn’t
slip on a banana peel. Foul play would have almost certainly been
suspected, and depending on Evan’s relationship with her parents, this is something he likely
would have been made aware of. Knowing all this, why would he even download
the Countdown app in the first place? As far as he could tell, it was one for one
on death predictions. I guess he could have been looking for answers
surrounding his girlfriend’s death, but this seems like more of a Google search than
something you try out first hand. Once I received my sentence, I probably wouldn’t
have gone around telling random people about the app. Doing so would inevitably lead others into
the same sheetty[a] situation we’re in. On the other hand, some human test subjects
might yield valuable insights into how the app works, so maybe he was lowkey playing
5D chess with human lives. Either way, I would be doing everything I
could to try and reverse engineer the app in the limited amount of time I had left. Again, the reviews would be a great place
to start, and the app’s listing should also include its creator, giving us another lead
to investigate. You could even put out an Upwork or Fiverr
contract to have some rent-a-geek try and hack into it. If all else fails, you could try appealing
to the App Store to have it delisted. This would at least spare others from suffering
the same mental anguish. Not sure they would actually go for it, though. After all, it is working as advertised. I get that Evan’s worried about dying during
the operation, but I don’t understand why he tries to flee the hospital. Evan knows Courtney wasn’t able to escape
her fate by choosing not to ride with him; you'd think he’d expect something unfortunate
to occur at the exact time he was supposed to die while under the knife. If that’s the case, then seems like the
best place he could possibly be. Instead of trying to leave the hospital, I
would create some kind of commotion to get as many staff members around me as I possibly
could, especially after seeing the shadowy figure in the mirror. From there, I’d probably have the best chance
of surviving anything the universe could dish out. If a team of trained medical professionals
in a twenty-first century hospital couldn’t save me from whatever was about to happen,
then I probably wouldn’t fare any better limping down five flights of stairs by myself. Also, it’s not clear how the app defines
death. Does it mean full on brain death, or does
your heart just have to stop beating? In the latter case, if Evan became clinically
dead but the hospital staff was able to revive him, wouldn’t that technically resolve the
situation? After all, he would still die at the exact
time it said he would; he just wouldn’t stay dead. Although I guess it could just as easily assign
him another countdown. Unfortunately, once Evan found himself locked
away from the main hallway, he was pretty much screwed. Okay, now it’s Quinn’s turn. Just like Evan and Courtney, she should have
known better than to install this thing. Call me superstitious, but when someone tells
me their girlfriend died at the exact moment predicted by a smartphone app, I don’t download
the app. Evan’s story goes so far beyond mere coincidence
that it would almost be a reasonable leap in logic to assume some kind of serial killer
is involved with the app. We could be agreeing to have our phone’s
GPS data sent to a lunatic with a coding certification and an eight inch hunting knife. Once we’ve received our predicted time of
death, we can choose to either shrug it off and joke about it with our friends or take
it seriously and look into the origins of the app. If this time coincides with some kind of life
event, such as a trip or party, we could assume that whoever created Countdown could have
some kind of insight into our personal life. After all, Quinn heard about the app from
someone local to her area, the programmers could be giving people they know short lifespans
and people they don’t longer ones. Now, it’s up to Quinn to learn from Evan’s
mistakes. Upon learning of Evan’s death, Quinn immediately
recalls their conversation from the day before. She passes a speech check to gain access to
his belongings and finds his cell phone shattered but still operational. Unfortunately, it’s also locked with his
biometrics, which means a trip down to the morgue. Quinn opens up the cadaver cooler and pulls
out the slab bearing Evan’s remains. After some casual corpse defilement, she’s
able to bypass the facial recognition scanner and gain access to his Countdown timer. It’s zeroes across the board. Back at her desk, Quinn has become fixated
on her rapidly dwindling lifespan. Her counter currently reads one day, twenty
two hours and fifty three minutes, which according to her calendar, places her time of death
during the short trip she has planned with her father and teenage sister the coming Saturday. Connecting the dots between her scheduled
family time and an early grave, Quinn reluctantly calls her father and asks if they can reschedule,
which he is more than happy to accommodate. Thinking she’s changed her fate, Quinn breathes
a sigh of relief, but moments later she receives a notification from Countdown, “User Agreement
Broken.” I’m not sure risking her career or even
criminal charges would be worth what Quinn was able to learn from Evan’s cell phone. Although, I suppose if there was still time
left after he’d already died, that would call into question the app’s accuracy. I would have definitely canceled my family
plans upon realizing they aligned with my predicted time of death, but as we know from
what happened to Courtney and now Evan, this would only be half the problem solved. If you really believe that the app displayed
their exact times of death regardless of whether they tried to change their respective fates,
that means we’re still moving on a path towards certain death. I would fake a family emergency and leave
work immediately, dedicating all my remaining time to learning more about the app and how
to stop it. Finding someone with programming knowledge
to explain how the app works at a fundamental level could reveal something we can use to
our advantage. Now, if only we had read the user agreement,
we might know exactly what we did to receive the violation notice and what the consequences
would be for doing so. Still, it’s probably something we could
find online provided enough people have taken an interest in it. Summary: Walking by an empty room, Quinn catches a
glimpse of a shadowy figure out of the corner of her eye, but further examination reveals
nothing out of the ordinary. A sudden tap on her shoulder nearly scares
Quinn out of her shoes, but it’s just Dr. Sullivan asking for help with a comatosed
patient. Sensing her underlying anxiousness, the doctor
asks if she’s okay. [b] Quinn plays it off as just a little first
day jitters, to which Dr. Sullivan responds by berating her with compliments and forcing
her into an awkward, hug/hair sniff. He then decides the dimly lit bedside of an
unconscious patient is the perfect place to plant one on her, but the feeling isn’t
mutual. She manages to shove him away. Shaken up from the attack, Quinn immediately
seeks out Nurse Amy to report Dr. Sullivan’s behavior, but before she can explain what
happened, the doctor calls the other nurse away for some urgent diagnostic work. Adding insult to injury, the Countdown app
once again reminds her she’s violated its terms of service. Later that night, Quinn does some internet
sleuthing to try and learn more about the Countdown app, which she’s apparently unable
to delete. In doing so, she finds an article on Courtney’s
death, who she immediately recognizes from the wallpaper on Evan’s phone. A comment on the article links to a vlog made
by someone else who allegedly downloaded the app. The woman in the video claims she’s been
seeing things that just can’t be, like her recently deceased cousin. In her final entry, she reveals that her time
has run out before screaming in terror and dropping her phone. She concludes the video must be a hoax and
shuts her laptop, only to find a ghoulified Evan staring at her from the foot of her bed. In a panic she runs for the front door, curb
stomping the sheet[c] out of her phone in the process. Out in front of her apartment building, Quinn
climbs into the perceived safety of her car. The next day, Quinn heads to a local wireless
store to pick up a replacement phone, preferably one that’s not possessed. The store’s manager, Tom Segura, offers
to jailbreak it for an extra $100 off the books, but Quinn is more than satisfied when
she sees no sign of Countdown among the preloaded applications. As she’s about to leave the store, Quinn
hears the shrill scream of the Countdown notification tone, looking down to find the malicious app
having successfully installed itself on her new device. Realizing her attempt to escape the app has
failed, Quinn catches the sight of the same cloaked figure in her back-up camera. A second look turns up nothing, but then a
pair of thick clawed hands grabs her from behind, causing her to stomp on the accelerator
out of panic. Quinn’s car speeds backward into the side
of a nearby Lexus. Before the situation can escalate further,
a stranger from the cellular store rushes to her aid, chasing off the enraged motorist
using a little tactical insanity. The newcomer’s name is Matt, and he only
has eighteen hours and thirty minutes left to live. It makes sense from a utilitarian perspective
to replace the smashed up phone, but how in the hell could she expect it to solve all
her problems? Even if the Countdown app didn’t magically
transfer itself to her new device, it would still exist on the other one. That’s like throwing away a credit card
bill to get out of paying it. It should be obvious now that she’s dealing
with forces beyond her comprehension, be they supernatural or technological. Given the shop owner offered to jail break
her phone, it’s reasonable to think he might be able to figure out something about the
app’s programming. I would have taken him up on the offer and
then hung around to explain the situation in greater detail. Since the pedestrian seemingly fails to notice
the mysterious cloaked figure loitering in the parking area, we can assume the forces
behind this are manipulating Quinn specifically. Knowing this, I would park my car and have
a trusted person pick me up. The last thing we need right now is to wind
up getting jump-scared into oncoming traffic, or, as it turns out, a parked car. Fortunately, Matt showed up before it could
turn into an insurance claim. Quinn and Matt head to a local dive to drown
their sorrows. In reviewing the situation, they both remember
being notified about violating the user agreement, which, of course, neither of them cared to
read. Unfortunately, there’s no way for them to
go back and dissect the terms of service having already agreed. Instead of simply Googling the missing document,
they decide they’ll have to find a useful idiot they can trick into downloading the
app, and the local crackpot seated down the bar seems like an ideal candidate. Playing off the kook’s obsession with all
things conspiratorial, the two manage to get him to download Countdown, stopping him just
short of accepting the user agreement so they can all read through it together. Turns out, had they actually bothered to read
what they were agreeing to, they would know that using the foreknowledge of their death
to try and alter their fates would violate the terms and conditions. Matt then reveals he was planning to take
a train to visit his aunt the next day, but canceled after seeing that’s when he was
supposed to die. With Quinn having done something similar,
they realize the time shown on the app was truly meant to align with their actual time
of death, and likely still does. Explanation: So, let me get this straight. You realize you fracked[d] up by not reading
through the terms of service agreement, and when you finally get another opportunity,
you stop after the first three paragraphs and run off into the night. Maybe this is natural selection. The good news is they’ve at least figured
out the meaning behind the user agreement notification, and in doing so, they have confirmation
the countdown is meant to represent the actual amount of time they have left to live. This also suggests the forces behind the app
are constantly monitoring their activities. How else would it know when someone has deliberately
taken action in an attempt to prevent their death? I would have taken a recording with my phone
while scrolling through the entire thing. That way we could refer back to the complete
document without sacrificing any more barflies. Otherwise, who knows what kind of important
information we could be missing out on? Quinn decides the best person to see about
this matter is the hospital chaplain, who gives them the contact information for another
priest that might be able to help. Matt takes the opportunity to use the men’s
room. Upon entering a stall, he’s immediately
treated to some spooky sheet[e]. The lights inexplicably shut off all around
him. He hears the sound of a crying child in a
nearby stall, but upon investigating, finds nothing there. Just then, a voice from behind calls his name. Matt turns around to find his deceased younger
brother lurking atop one of the sinks. The boy tackles him to the ground, seizing
him by the collar and demanding to know where “it” is. Suddenly, the lights come back on, and as
quickly as the episode began, it’s all over, for now. As suggested by the chaplain, Quinn and Matt
arrive at a local church to meet an excitable young priest with a fascination for the demonic. The hyperactive holyman immediately becomes
enthralled with their plight and quickly relates it to an ancient story of a similar nature. According to the legend, a cowardly prince
sought out a fortune teller to find out whether he was going to die in a coming battle. Upon learning his death would occur during
the fight, the prince decided to send his younger brother instead. This attempt at changing fate incurred the
wrath of a demon by the name of Ozhin, who would go on to torment the prince until his
death at the exact time that was originally foreseen. Father John goes on to suggest the Countdown
app might be part of a modern day version of the very same predicament. All he needs to confirm this suspicion is
an excerpt from the app’s code. Remembering the offer to jail break her new
phone, Quinn and Matt return to the wireless store. They catch Tom Segura just as he’s closing
up shop, but manage to enlist his help by greasing him with their combined $2,300 worth
of credit cards. Upon cracking into the app, it’s shown to
take up a whopping 60 gigs of hard drive space. Further inspection reveals a healthy dose
of Latin text in the source code, followed by the names and countdowns of all current
users. Seeing an opportunity to benefit himself,
Tom uses his coding skills to add sixty years to his own countdown. The change is immediately reflected on his
smartphone, giving Matt and Quinn hope they’ve finally found a way out. While searching for Quinn’s name, she discovers
her little sister, Jordan, and the counter is three minutes shy of her own. She asks Tom to change her sister’s first,
lending her another eighty six years among the living. All the way across town, Jordan receives a
notification from the app stating her countdown has been updated. Believing their troubles to be over, Matt
and Quinn wave goodbye to the standup comedian as he leaves for a Tinder date. Unfortunately, Tom’s date doesn’t go well. Not because of his overt lack of charm, but
because hacking the demon’s app broke the all-important user agreement and it off enough
to prematurely zero out his death timer. This brings the official body count up to
three, now it’s down to only Quinn, Jordan, and Matt. Okay, sixty gigs?! This thing takes like two seconds to download. Hope they have unlimited data. Given the app automatically knows the very
instant someone tries to change their fate, they would all have to be profoundly stupid
to think this would go unnoticed. And, since they neglected to read more than
the first few lines of the user agreement, they have absolutely no idea what the consequences
might be for a transgression of this nature. At the very least, I would still take the
snippet of code back to Father John to have him decipher it. As far as everyone knows, this zero IQ play
just made everything ten times worse. Also, Ozhin had license to torment Tom for
thirty years after he went tampering with the app like that. Prematurely wasting him was a huge missed
opportunity for prolonged suffering. Sorry Tom. My question is, couldn’t he do the same
thing to Quinn and Matt? After all, hacking the Countdown app was their
idea in the first place. What’s a couple days of lost torture when
they’re actively seeking a way to weasel out of their predicament? Quinn wakes in the middle of the night to
the sound of something rustling at her bedroom door. She tries to wake Matt beside her, only to
find he’s actually the one standing outside. Suddenly, the arm around her waist morphs
into Ozhin’s and drags Quinn under the covers. Matt quickly frees her from the mass of tangled
sheets, but seeing nothing there, assures her it was only a nightmare. Just then, Quinn’s phone screeches from
the nightstand. Her timer has suddenly reset itself to the
original time of death, and Matt’s shortly follows suit. Back at Quinn’s family home, Jordan picks
up her phone to find her countdown has also reset just like the others. Following his standard playbook, Ozhin immediately
begins screwing with the lights in an effort to frighten the teenage girl. Lacking any other option, Jordan crawls under
her bed in an attempt to hide from whatever’s lurking in the darkness. From out of nowhere, she hears the voice of
her deceased mother calling her name. Suddenly, an unseen force drags the bed away,
and Jordan finds herself face to face with her long dead parent. Thoroughly terrorized, she flees for the front
door, reaching the exit just as Quinn and Matt come to the rescue. Huh, manually adjusting the countdown clock
didn’t work. I wonder who could have seen that coming. Also, why is the demon harassing Jordan now? As far as she knew, the Countdown app was
just a novelty item, so why would she bother trying to change anything? It must have something to do with Quinn modifying
the death counter on her behalf. Finally reunited, the three short timers tear
back to the church to wake up Father John. Reading from a photo of the source code Quinn
took while back at the wireless store, the priest determines the app is part of a curse,
which he believes can be broken. According to his encyclopedic knowledge of
all things unholy, they just have to prove the countdown wrong to break its hold over
them. Instead of bumping someone off before their
time, Father John suggests they conduct a protection ritual to keep the demon at bay
while they run out the clock. According to his reasoning, as long as they
surpass the countdown by a single second, it should be enough to nullify the curse and
save their lives. Of course, he’s never actually done anything
like this before. The priest’s plan is to create a circular
symbol in the floor out of salt, which, once blessed, should prevent the demon from crossing
the perimeter. To ensure it can’t simply be blown away,
they mix a Costco drum of rock salt with house paint and set to work duplicating the design
shown in the ancient text. Yah, despite Father’s John’s confidence,
I’d be thinking of a plan B right about now. From the sound of it, killing anyone before
their projected time should be enough to nullify the curse, although it’s not clear whether
this hypothetical victim would have to be on Countdown already. Technically, their death would be a result
of us using the app, so that would place it ahead of whenever it was naturally ordained
to be. Regardless, one would have to believe that
Quinn and Jordan are likely to protect one another above anyone else, so if I were Matt,
I’d be keeping an eye on them, and vice versa. If it looks like Father John’s plan isn’t
going to work, someone may have to take one for the team. The baling hook on the wall of the church
basement looks like it ought to get the job done. Just saying. If I were Ozhin, I’d be obstructing them
every step of the way at this point. He probably couldn’t influence Father John,
but Matt, Quinn, and Jordan have all violated their user agreements. We know from Matt’s encounter in the hospital
bathroom that the visions can physically knock them around. I’d be spawning in some dead relatives for
a family sized beat down right about now. Sure, Ozhin supposedly can’t kill anyone
ahead of schedule, but that doesn’t mean he can’t use his powers to incapacitate
or detain them until it’s their time. Dude you’re from Hell, shouldn’t you be
better at this kind of thing? Once their work is complete, Matt checks his
phone to find only two and a half minutes until his time runs out. The group assembles inside the circle in anticipation
of the showdown with death. As Father John begins reciting prayers to
ward off any offending spirits, the lights in the church basement begin to flicker and
die. Jordan spots Ozhin as he emerges from the
darkness behind them. The demon attempts to cross the protective
boundary, only to shriek as it catches fire. Momentarily thwarted, the dark spirit fades
back into the shadows, instead opting for psyops over a direct assault. A piercing, earsplitting noise begins emanating
from Matt’s phone, deafening everyone but him. As he struggles to silence his device, he’s
struck by the sight of his younger brother, who then proceeds to lure him away from the
others. As soon as Matt steps outside the circle,
Ozhin latches on to Matt’s leg and drags him away from the church. The two sisters scramble after him, but are
nearly crushed by flying furniture, leaving Jordan pinned between two shelves. Quinn manages to fight her way out of the
basement and finds Matt walking around freely. Just as he proclaims they’ve beaten the
devil’s game, a rogue pickup slams into him at high speed, pinning him against a nearby
tree. God darn[f] it. We literally had it. Plan A was actually working for once, but
Matt just had to go chasing after his little brother, who he has known to be dead for years
at this point. We should have known that Ozhin would try
and use mind tricks to manipulate us like he has all along. One thing is for sure, I would not, under
any circumstances, have left the circle to go after him. We’re in the fourth quarter here and we
have a plan that works. Trying to save Matt could leave us too gravely
injured to prevent our own deaths. Afterall, Ozhin might not be able to kill
us until it’s our turn, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t break our backs with flying
debris and torture us for what remains of our lives. After leaving her sister in the care of the
medical staff, one of her fellow nurses stops her in the hallway, claiming she knows the
truth about what happened between Quinn and Dr. Sullivan. In reliving her encounter with the doctor,
Quinn remembers that he too downloaded the Countdown app, landing himself a cozy fifty-seven
years. With less than fifteen minutes remaining to
spare her sister’s life, Quinn sets out with a new plan. She barges into Dr. Sullivan’s office. Pouring on the charm, she invites him to the
closed-off wing of the hospital so she can properly thank him for stitching up her sister. Though hesitant at first, Dr. Sullivan decides
to take Quinn up on her offer. She ambushes him, working him over Gordon
Freeman style until he’s flat on his back. With her target immobilized, Quinn pulls out
a syringe full of morphine and moves in for the coup de grȃce, but before she can land
the killing blow, Jordan intervenes and begs her to stop. Suddenly, an unseen force drags the injured
physician off to another room. It seems Ozhin has become wise to Quinn’s
intentions and isn’t about to let her disrupt his design. Quinn tracks Dr. Sullivan deeper into the
restricted area. From out of nowhere, he launches an ambush
of his own, socking Quinn in the face and disarming her. But before he can finish the job, Quinn returns
the favor with a well placed kick. Once again, Quinn winds up on top with the
morphine, but just like before, Ozhin foils her plan, knocking her away and giving the
doctor a chance to escape. Elsewhere in the medical labyrinth, Jordan’s
time is running out. Hearing the sound of something approaching,
she leaves her hiding place in a last ditch effort to stay alive. Unfortunately, for young Jordan, Ozhin’s
no stranger to hide and seek. The vindictive demon grabs onto the girl and
heaves her through a nearby window. With only fifty seconds left, Ozhin prepares
to make Jordan’s final moments a living Hell, but before he can commence to torturing,
Quinn calls out from down the hall. In a final bid to save her sister’s life,
Quinn holds the fatal dose of morphine to her own arm. Ozhin responds by taking the form of the girls’
late mother, attempting to dissuade her suicidal ideations by pulling on the heart strings. But Quinn doesn’t buy it. She presses down on the syringe and almost
instantly loses consciousness. The defeated demon hoists Quinn into the air,
shrieking in rage as life drains from her eyes. Having lost control over her fate, Ozin turns
to ash, crumbling to the floor in a dusty heap. Jordan quickly rushes over to her sister,
determined to bring her back from the dead. She then discovers the word “Narcan” written
on her arm. Beside Quinn’s body, Jordan finds a small
vial of the life saving substance, along with a fresh needle protruding from a pants pocket. Fortunately for Quinn, her little sister has
a knack for Ikea instructions. Jordan administers the antidote, and within
seconds, Quinn cheats death for a second time. Clearly Dr. Sullivan deserves to be punished
for his crimes, but perhaps that should have been left up to the court of law. Ambushing him like this would only serve to
undermine her case, and if she had succeeded in killing him, she may have saved her own
life only to wind up behind bars. Quinn sticking herself with the morphine only
to be revived afterwards seems like a much more effective play. There are just a couple problems with this
plan. First off, morphine overdose can take several
minutes to put someone down for good. Because of this, it’s unlikely Quinn would
have fully succumbed to the effects in the fifty seconds left on Jordan’s clock. The second problem is that Narcan can only
stop someone from overdosing; it doesn’t actually bring you back from the dead. In order for this plan to work, Quinn would
have to enter sudden cardiac arrest, and the only way to bring her back at that point would
be with a defibrillator. Since Jordan’s countdown was three minutes
ahead of Quinn’s, this plan should have been executed immediately upon entering the
hospital. I would tell Jordan what I was planning to
do ahead of time and instruct her to call for help and zap me with an AED as soon as
I was clinically dead. Assuming Ozhin couldn’t jab us with Narcan
before then, we’d be in the clear as soon as our heart stopped beating. Speaking of Ozhin, if I were him, I would
have used my telekinesis to whip the syringe away while Quinn was standing around recklessly
for no reason. If he can use his powers to drag a grown man
across the floor, how hard could it be to rip a one ounce syringe out of someone’s
hand? Some time later, the girls and their father
visit their mother’s grave in observation of her birthday. Having paid their respects, they turn to leave,
but before they can drive off into the sunset, Quinn hears a notification come in, “Countdown
2.0 is now installed.” Darn[g], that’s a downer, but as long as
this new app operates under the same rules, we should be able to beat it just like last
time. Well, maybe not just like last time. Obviously, we can’t keep overdosing on pain
medication everytime we get a notification, but as stated before, the protection circle
really seemed like a viable option. As long as we can make it back there before
our time is up, it should be a sure fire way to keep Ozhin off our backs. Looking back on who might have survived, poor
Courtney was pretty much screwed from the start. She had no way of knowing the app was legit
and even if she did, the short notice she received would have greatly limited her ability
to react. Evan should never have downloaded the app
after what happened to Courtney, and instead begun the investigation. Matt’s death was absolutely preventable. All we had to do was keep him inside the circle,
which was just a matter of reinforcing the idea of not trusting visions of dead loved
ones, or just plain strapping him to a chair. Ultimately, Quinn and Jordan were able to
outsmart Ozhin and get another chance at life, but how they went about it calls into question
the way Countdown operates in the first place. If Quinn could be revived by the Narcan, she
couldn’t have been clinically dead, much less brain dead, so where exactly does the
app draw the line? Let me know what you think in the comments. In the end, I think the killer app from Countdown
was Beaten[h]. Thanks for watching, and remember, read the
terms and conditions of every app you download. Just kidding, skip that sheet[i] and blindly
accept your fate. We all know you’re going to anyway.
