A PSA About Reading the Terms & Conditions

We've had our share of killer dolls, killer beds, killer microwaves, killer wigs...why WOULDN'T we expect to find a whole subgenre about murderous phone apps?

Quick Plot: Courteney and her pals are playing a drinking game when a diet discussion leads them to discover Countdown, a smartphone app that tells you the exact time of your expected death. Think of it as Helena Bonham Carter's Big Fish witch character as a phone icon.

While her pals' prognosis ranges between age 20 and 63, poor Courtney has just three hours on her clock. Her drunk driving boyfriend Evan is unimpressed, though Courtney is smart enough to walk home. 

No matter: Courtney is murdered by an unseen force in her bathroom just as

Evan crashes, the empty passenger seat destroyed. Some time later, Evan is awaiting his surgery when he meets Quinn, a friendly almost-nurse who listens to his ravings long enough to download Countdown. Like Courtney, her numbers aren't great. Throw in a sexually harassing supervisor, ill-behaved kid sister, and guilt over a dead mom and you've got a pretty rough few days left for Quinn. 

Thankfully, she's not alone. Joined by a helpful fellow doomed stranger named Matt and eager-beaver priest, Quinn plots to save a batch of unlucky app users.

Written and directed by first timer Justin Dec, Countdown didn't get the highest reception from critics or fans when it premiered in theaters last year. App-based horror films have a tough wall to climb, since the concept still sounds silly to most filmgoers. Honestly, this is something I don't understand. Movies, particularly the cheaper genre type, are ALWAYS going to grab onto the most zeitgeist-y tools of their time. As I say all the time with social media slashers, why wouldn't a young filmmaker use that platform to reach the exact target audience that uses the technology?

That's not to say that Countdown is by any means great. Clearly descended from the Final Destination school of combining humor with elaborately foreshadowed deaths, it doesn't quite marry its tones as well as I would have liked. There's a lightness fitting of its PG-13 rating, and Elizabeth Lail (poor stalked Beck of You) works well in the lead. Unfortunately, the horror aspect never really clicks into place. 

There are the token demon-faced spurts, lots of darkly lit hallways, and random ghosts-of-their-pasts cameos that seem to complicate the overall nature of Countdown (the app) without adding much to Countdown (the movie). It's messy. 

But hey, dumb horror doesn't necessarily mean unenjoyable horror. I probably enjoyed Countdown far more than most genre fans not because it was scary, but because it had a certain sense of fun. I can't particularly recommend it to most viewers, but there's a good time to be had with low expectations.

High Points

Dec clearly has a pleasantly clever touch, and it's mostly on display with his more extreme side characters. What could be grating--a sarcastic tech guy and unorthodox priest--brings just the right amount of spark to an otherwise dreary tale

Low Points

While there are some decent setups and jump scares, like so many recent horror films, Countdown struggles mightily when it comes to embodying its demons in physical form

Lessons Learned

The way you get fat is by eating too many calories

The real sign that humanity is doomed is that too many people use their phones for texting and Facebook

If you're lucky enough to overdose at just the right time, you just might get some cake

Always read the terms and conditions. Oh, who are we kidding? Most of us would rather accept a supernatural death than actually do that every time we download something

Rent/Bury/Buy

Countdown doesn't play at the same level as a Final Destination or even the similarly styled Wish Upon, but it's perfectly fine for what it is and undeserving of the strangely aggressive hate it seemed to collect upon its release. When you're trying to kill 90 minutes without too much thought, it might prove satisfying enough.

A Quiet Silence

The phrase "timing is everything" is hardly radical, but in the world of concept horror, it can truly make all the difference. Take, for example, Tim Lebbon's novel The Silence. Published in 2015, it tells the story of an average nuclear family in England trying to survive a plague of otherworldly monsters who hunt by sound. Since one of the children is deaf, their fluency in sign language serves as a helpful tool in outlasting the enemy. They hole up in an empty farmhouse and do their best to not make a sound.

Yes, I essentially just described the plot of John Krasinski's 2018 sleeper hit A Quiet Place. Much like how Suzanne Collins allegedly knew nothing about Battle Royale when penning The Hunger Games, A Quiet Place was also seemingly developed without any knowledge of Lebbon's book. It also had the good fortune to get its cinematic release well before director John R. Leonetti's adaptation of The Silence, which dropped on Netflix with the ill luck of being seen as a cash-in of both Krasinski's film and the similarly premised Bird Box.

All this is to say that The Silence has a lot agains it from any casual viewer's perspective. Having enjoyed the novel and Leonetti's Wish Upon, I was rooting for it.

Quick Plot: When a pair of researching spelunkers head deep into a Pennsylvanian cave, an undiscovered species of bat-like creatures emerge, blindly chewing their way through the entire Western Hemisphere. Stuck in the middle is a typical American family headed by dad Hugh (top ten crush list Stanley Tucci), mom Kelly, kid brother Jude, and key to their survival, 16-year-old Ally (Kiernan Shipka). Just three years earlier, a car accident robbed Ally of her hearing, meaning she's now used to living in the titular silence with her ASL-fluent family.

This is a huge convenience, as vesps (as the creatures are dubbed) hunt purely by sound. Joined by Kelly's cancer-ridden mom, Hugh's BFF Glenn, and a lovable but barking Rotweiler, the Andrews hitch up their vehicles and head to more rural roads, signing and whispering (even though, you know, they're signing) along the way. 

Naturally, this being of 2019's societal collapse subgenre, human-eating CGI bat things aren't the only enemy on the hunt. With less than thirty minutes left to spare, The Silence tosses in a creepy cult led by a tongue-less reverend with his eye on the apparently fertile Ally.

Let me get this out of the way: as you might have deduced by my intro, I feel a little sorry for The Silence. Director Leonetti has proven to be pretty hit-or-miss in the horror genre. For as much as I despised everything about his Butterfly Effect 2, I've been a genuine fan of his more recent output (Annabelle, Wish Upon). Throw in a cast that includes Stanley Tucci's hairy arms and Sally Draper and what's not to love?

Well, unfortunately for me, this movie.

Lebbon's book is told from the alternate points of view of Hugh and Ally (younger in the novel than Shipka in the film), providing a solid foundation of the Andrews. Ally in particular is a smart, resourceful girl, having transformed her deafness into the very key to her family's survival. A Quiet Place has its flaws (WHY DOESN'T ANYONE WEAR SOCKS GODDAMNIT?) but one of its greatest strengths is young actress Millicent Simmonds, hearing-impaired herself and playing a character with the same condition. Aside from the right politics of such a casting choice, Simmonds is wonderful, and you completely buy the struggles and strengths she deals with.

I ADORE Kiernan Shipka and continue to see great things for her future. That being said, she is not the right choice for this role.

Shipka can hear just fine, and the movie just never comes close to making us believe otherwise. Characters use sign language while whispering loudly, rendering it rather useless in the scheme of things. Then again, when the final act introduces us to a cult who has to demonstrate their menace with a sharpie and legal pad, you might be more forgiving.

The Silence boasts a ridiculously impressive cast and not a terrible creature design (although as someone partial to the cuteness of bats, the vesps to be are less scary and more like Pee-Wee's Playhouse's Pteri recovering form a meth addiction). Had Bird Box and A Quiet Place not come out mere months before, it would probably still be disappointing to me but more a "meh" rating from the masses. Instead, most audiences will see it a ripoff, and an incredibly mediocre one at that.

High Points

Pat Kiernan alert! Anyone who enjoys morning news on New York 1 knows how comforting the sight of the cheerful Canadian can be. So The Silence has that going for it

Low Points

I could harp on the fact that you can barely see what happens in any of the night scenes, but let me take this space to instead complain about the lack of any real development of time. We have absolutely no idea how many days/weeks/hours it is between the vesps' arrival and the Andrews' flight, nor does the film give us any kind of overview of how far they've driven or where they're even going. Is it weird that a small cult has developed and is already looking to repopulate the earth? WHO KNOWS?

Lessons Learned

Rattlesnakes know their way around upstate NY farmhouse sewers

iPads offer plenty of post-apocalyptic functions, but being used a map is not one of them

Really talented deaf teenagers don't even need to face you to read your lips

Curious Credits

Most films based on novels include that note in the opening credits, yet The Silence completely omits Lebbon and goes straight to screenwriters Carey and Shane Van Dyke (the latter the director of the surprisingly decent Paranormal Entity and the less so A Haunting In Salem). I don't know what Hollywood politics were involved with such a choice, but in the wake of most viewers watching this thinking "here's the Asylum adaptation of A Quiet Place", it seems like a strange missed opportunity of defense

Rent/Bury/Buy

Tim Lebbon's The Silence is an enjoyable horror novel with sympathetic characters and some strong monster passages. John Leonetti's The Silence is a messy genre film that doesn't capture its heart. Read the book, and if you need a Stanley Tucci fix, do what I do every other weekend and rewatch Burlesque.

When You Wish Upon an Evil Chinese Music Box

If Kazaam has taught one thing, it's that Shaquille O'Neal always had bigger career potential as a product spokesman than film actor. 

If it taught us one more, it's that magical wish granters always have a price.

Quick Plot: Teenage Clare hasn't exactly had a charmed life. As a little girl, she witnessed her mother (Law & Order's favorite surprise lesbian Elisabeth Rohm) commit suicide. Dad Ryan Phillippe (yes, we're at the point in time where Ryan Phillippe is dad to a teenager and yes, that makes me feel old) is now an out-of-work saxophonist who makes some cash off his dumpster diving findings. 

Also, she's like, super not popular.

Life takes an upturn when Clare's dad brings home a mysterious box from a cemetery garbage pile. The ancient Chinese writing seems to suggest it grants wishes, leading Clare to give it a go, wishing her high school nemesis "rots." Cue the mysterious skin disease. In a completely unrelated turn of evens, Clare's beloved golden retriever mysteriously dies.

It takes a shocking number of similar granted wish/dead pal pairings before Clare can admit the obvious: the haunted box will grant her seven wishes, but each one must be paid for with the violent death of someone close. With the benefits of Clare's wishes growing bigger each time, can she stop herself from, you know, continuing to murder her friends and family?

Directed by the better-than-everyone-says-it-is Annabelle and way-worse-than-you-know-even-though-you-might-not-know-it-existed The Butterfly Effect 2's John R. Leonetti, Wish Upon is kind of a delight. A good chunk of the credit probably goes to Barbara Marshall, whose script is equally in tune to teenagers as her previous credit, Viral.

Played with a perfectly immature intensity by Joey King, Clare is a selfish, impulsive young woman who makes for a fantastically complicated protagonist. It's easy to judge her (admittedly very irresponsible and immoral) actions, but the film does a successful job of putting us into her mindset. As the poor, motherless artist bullied by the rich pretty kids, we understand why she'd be so easily seduced by something that can make her dreams come true. It's almost like a horror version of Lady Bird.

Wish Upon isn't a modern classic, but it's a solid, well-paced and made little horror movie that's simply much better than it could have been. The entire cast brings something interesting, from veterans like Phillippe and an ill-fated Sherilyn Fenn to the diverse, realistic teenagers (which includes Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt's rising star Ki Hong Lee, Stranger Things' own Barb, Shannon Purser, and the incredibly charismatic Sydney Park). 

High Points
EVERYONE, this movie has a Most Popular Girl montage. A MOST POPULAR GIRL MONTAGE I SAID

Low Points
The Final Destination-ing of the death scenes is fun at first, but by the fourth case of teasing out what random contraption is going to slay which character, it feels a little tired

Lessons Learned

The price of quality ancient Chinese translation is a quality batch of wontons

When it comes to making wishes through evil box genies, use your adjectives wisely

HOW MANY MORE TIMES CAN I SAY TO BE MORE CAREFUL AROUND GARBAGE DISPOSALS BEFORE SOMEONE LISTENS????

Rent/Bury/Buy

Wish Upon is streaming on Amazon Prime and makes a great way to enjoy 90 minutes of your life. You probably won't think much about it after the fact, but it's perfectly engaging during its run.